Boog's Blog

off to a Parador not too far from the Madrid airport. Will stay here two nights to make driving easier.

For our final event in Burgos, we attended the Sunday mass at the Cathedral. We planned to leave on a Sunday morning just so we wouldn’t miss this- it includes a fabulous organ. We did this on a previous visit in 2017.

Cantata Mass at the Chapel.

A single priest carried the entire liturgy — preaching the sermon, leading the ceremony, and singing much of the mass himself, accompanied by an organist and a separate singer with a microphone. There were no missals or hymnals in sight, yet nearly everyone in the packed chapel knew the words and music by heart and sang in perfect step. The ritual was elaborate, with incense swung again and again in the customary way. One moment struck an unexpected parallel with the Jewish tradition: the priest opened a door in the retablo to reveal chalices holding the wafers, echoing the ark that holds the Torah. The priest wore green vestments, set against a resplendent polychrome-and-gold retablo, and the congregation filled the chapel completely.

Entry was not possible as you needed to buy tickets. You could go to the mass for free and there is a fabulous organ. Sharon took recordings, but we haven’t found a way to put them into the blog.

Stopped halfway to the Parador at a café on the road. 20 minute line to get up to the bar, 20 minutes or more waiting for the food because the place was a madhouse. The picture doesn’t show the depth of the line or the madhouse feeling.

The inscription refers to a 15 century hospital, possibly the earliest hospital, and earliest medical system. Appears to still be in operation.

Alcala is very much a University town and the main street is lined with old buildings, each having their own faculty.

This town is the birthplace of Cervantes. Here is his house and some fine bronze work.

Walking about the town, we find this is the week of the festival of Saint Bartholomew. I asked at the front desk who he is but none of the three people had any idea.

Final full day here. Hotel desayuno.

This is the end of our third trip to Burgos. Two were on the Camino. This was much easier and more relaxing. 

Dulce de Medina. Burgos version. There is another version that is moorish but not really the same pastry.

Rediculously rich. Filled with garlic and bacon and oil.

Grilled lamb chops served with potatoes and green pepper.

English translation was “bikberry tart” but clearly was a blueberry cheesecake.

The restaurant was above this tapas bar. Same kitchen.

Wandered over to a 12th century convent that looked quite interesting and apparently had a fine fabric museum. However, when we went to buy tickets, they explained tickets are only for a tour which takes an hour and is entirely in Spanish. There was no other option. We passed and walked back for another couple of miles.

Refreshed at a bar with tortilla. We and a 1000 of our closest friends. Other tapas looked good but we couldn’t stuff them in.

On a building behind the cathedral

Dinner picnic.

It is a several hour drive with a choice of decent roads. We took the less speedy route but also avoided the switchback route. Had to cross a bunch of mountains to reach Burgos.

Lots and lots of speed cameras and again no potholes. We have driven now for many days and seen 1.25 potholes on the main roads.

Research shows that the Spanish road authorities

are very fussy about giving out tickets, and the Spanish drivers have lots of tricks to avoid them using the road signs, the announcements and the GPS in the cars.

3.4 kilometer tunnel; one of the longest we’ve driven through.

First stop in the central shopping center outside of Burgos was Decathlon. A sporting goods store about the size of a giant Walmart. Got a bolsa for overflow. Prices are extremely reasonable.

The hotel, NH Palacio, is a 16 century convent that has been converted. It was clearly a beautiful palace. We got incredibly lucky in town, finding a free parking spot right in front of the hotel for our entire stay. We have a good room thanks to Michelle. We are staying free as she had instructed us to obtain GHA membership.

If you blow up the picture, you can see the four different levels of jamon Iberico and the price. We learned about these when we went to the museum of jamon on a previous trip along the Camino.

Dinner at hotel.

First some good wine

Then local stuff

In fact, sent back twice to get it cooked sort of the way we wanted it. Very tasty though.

The total bill with wine, coffee, steak stew, tax and tip was €70. Not Palo Alto prices.

Final day here before heading South. Unfortunately, we had two day 12s, a typo.

Visited the main library in San Sebastian It is a very modern library; large and the best place to go for clean bathrooms. It sits at the entry to the old town in a large impressive building. The library is downstairs.

Notice that they are not using the Dewey decimal system.

The poem on a wall next to the entrance is in Basque. It would be nice if a Spanish version had been included since there are not many Basque speakers around. Translation at end. Claude would not translate it for copyright reasons, but ChatGPT didn’t give a damn.

At the far end of the playa is a piece of art that we remembered from previous visits.

A.I. stuff: Tectonic rotation (Late Eocene–Miocene, Pyrenean orogeny): As the Iberian plate collided with the European plate (closing the Bay of Biscay’s opening phase and building the Pyrenees), the basin fill was compressed, folded, and steeply tilted — in many places to near-vertical or overturned dips. This is the same shortening event responsible for the dramatic vertical “flysch” walls at Zumaia and Deba. So the beds you’re looking at didn’t form vertical; they were rotated ~90° from horizontal by this compression.

Quality was worth a tip; yes, fire is burning inside. Might be the Sagrada Familia.

Then off to the last of the pintxos dinners in Basque area.

Another perfect meal Boog style.

Yes. The poster is in Basque (Euskara). It is a poetic invitation to enter a library and, in effect, to enter the world of books.

Title

“Liburutegiak gonbidatzen zaitu”
= “The library invites you.”

Here is a fairly literal translation, while keeping the poetic tone:

Come, give me your hand.
If you want, bring with you
your black hat,
your blue scarf,
or your red clown nose.

Turn off your mobile phone.
Look for your special abriteportas [this is an unusual/possibly invented word in the poem],
otherwise the door will not open.

Leave behind the noise of the outside world.
Put down or remove what is unnecessary.
Put away your bad mood.

Then fill yourself with the surprising dust of the shelves.
And come with us.

You must take a break from the hustle and bustle.
From inside and from outside.

You must take in what can be seen and what cannot be seen.
Look, from within yourself, into the distance.
Listen, so that you can enter into yourself.

Be brave, laugh, be touched,
be afraid, and then relax.

Lose yourself along the way so that you can find yourself,
put words to what you feel,
wander through the paper jungle,
laugh from the depths of your soul,
walk sleepily through a data-pantile…

You need to imagine and to dream.

You will speak words; you will make words speak.
You will entertain yourself; you will make others happy.
You will console yourself; you will console others.
You will be moved; you will move others.

Where are we going?
Have you figured it out?
THE LIBRARY.
Come in!

A few phrases are deliberately playful and difficult to translate literally. The central message is quite lovely: the library is presented as a place where you leave the noise of ordinary life behind and enter a world of imagination, emotion, discovery, and connection through books.

The final “Noski!” means “Of course!” or “Certainly!”.

Easy relaxing day. Wandering. 

Pastry shop and coffee at the entrance to the old town. A beautiful old patisserie.

A good percentage of the boats have no motor and just a set of oars.

Potatoes boiling in a large pot and then later large chunks of onions added to the top.

Passed some folks eating this nice looking (although still mooing) steak, and I took their picture with their permission. We have seen this multiple times where the Spanish eat just the meat and there’s no vegetables or any side dish. Just sit down and buy a large steak and split it between X number of people.

Picnic dinner in the hotel. Found a good (probably Charentais) melon, some fruit, granola, cheese and yogurt.

Drove to San Sebastián via St Jean de Luz.

The best way in is taking exit 3 from the big toll highway to avoid the corniche.

Many children in what looks like summer camp or day camp. Multiple camps each with different toys. Did not look like the kids were doing much swimming.

Crepe with Sucre and limon

Buckwheat crepe with piperade and undercooked egg. Both really excellent (not the egg).

We are in a converted convent Hotel Convento Zenit.

Similar size to St. Jean although San Sebastian is a much much bigger city.

We have visited this bar on our previous two visits. Appears to have been upgraded with more tables now and nice table service. Still very busy.

A rather surprising pintxo that was surprisingly good.

Sunday, Assumption day, holiday.

mostly a shopping day. Picked up lots of odds and ends in a few nice things.

well, remembered from a previous visit

The man in the red shirt is a local politician who we chatted with for a while. He like others realize Trump is a con man though they use the term corruption.

I watched them for a while. Professional grade probably been playing as a group for decades. 

Very nice relaxed dinner.

Massive day at Les Halles.

Giant special fireworks.

The downside of France: everywhere outside you smell cigarette smoke. In cafés, plazas, just walking around

A.I. stuff: The August 15th fireworks show (Biarritz sous les étoiles) is one of the biggest summer events on the French Basque Coast. The significance and symbolism behind the date stem from two major cultural reasons:

1. Assumption Day (L’Assomption)

2. Napoleon III & Biarritz’s Royal Heritage.  he built a palace here and turned this fishing village into what it is today. 

August 15th was historically Saint-Napoléon Day (la Fête Napoléon), the official national day established under Emperor Napoleon III.

Perfect!

Perfect hard crust

Dual fireworks, from the lighthouse and from the big rocks. both displays converge over the plage.

One of the best fireworks we have seen. Some really creative hearts, and stars and weeping willows and on and on and on really first rate. 

We took the slow route, which is the easy route without having the giant mountain passes with nauseating switchbacks.

Impressive tunnels some well over a kilometer. Again, a full day of driving without seeing a single pothole on roads that are absolutely perfect and higher speed limits than we have.

The last 50 km into Biarritz were terrible. long 5-10-15 minute queues at each tollbooth of which there were many. Then, to hotel, which is in centre ville. We had Directions how to get in by some circuitous route, opening barriers by giving them a call, people behind us coming out of their cars and banging on our window, that type of thing, roads to small for our car, as you would expect.

Our room was not quite ready so we went for a walk and stopped at a bar for a beer and what did they have there but our favs: patatas bravas and peppers de padron. Yeah! Yum.

City is a madhouse for shopping eating ice cream and just eating.

Hoards everywhere eating, drinking, socializing, maybe more.

Fireworks tomorrow at midnight, we think.