Burgos, Our Winter Holiday. The City, Local Towns And A Night’s Stay In Albarracín

I know, I know, it’s been too long. Around 7 months since my last post (or more) is inexcusable. However, today’s entry is going to be so long I’m hoping to make up for lost time. Or it could have the opposite effect and you’ll never want to see the likes of my blog, or me, again! We shall soon find out 😊.

Actually, I’ve been wanting to write this post for the last few months, half of the photos I had already sorted and had placed them in their respective folders on my desktop. Choosing and editing the photos is the most lengthy process of each post. Sometimes I can have up to a thousand photos from our holiday, so as you can probably fathom, it’s quite an arduous task.

I also have to reduce the size of my photos. I add so many to my posts that if I didn’t reduce the size of the original photo I would have no space left on my blog. These last few months have been quite busy too and I hadn’t got round to going through the last half of those hundreds of pics.

Thankfully it’s been quite warm here the last couple of days, which I love 😊, but there are times, especially early afternoon, when you can’t do anything too demanding. It’s even too hot at those times for me to work on my crochet projects (yarn doesn’t slip through hot hands very well), and I can’t stand doing nothing. Hence it was time to open my photos application and get this dang thing ready to be published 😁.

Going through all those photos months after our holiday has brought back some fabulous memories. My only problem is that I’ve forgotten the names, details and history of lots of the places we visited. Luckily Google helps me out a bit but you’ll have to pardon my ignorance when I don’t go into quite as much detail as normal. In fact, there are some photos that I have absolutely no idea what the subject is! But I’ll do my best.

Burgos is a marvellous and beautiful city. We arrived towards the end of December last year and I fell in love with it as soon as we arrived. We had booked a week’s stay at a modern little apartment just outside the city centre. It was the perfect spot as we only had a 10 minute walk to the old town and the main attractions.

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Our first few days in any city are normally spent exploring the old town, finding decent eateries and relaxing. This holiday was no exception. There was a fantastic Christmassy vibe, due I think to the cold weather and also the glorious architecture. It really is very picturesque. Here are a few photos of our strolls around the old town.

As you probably know, Pep and I love to walk. Whenever we go on holiday we only use the car when absolutely necessary, mainly when we want to visit local towns and villages. Burgos is a great city to enjoy lots of strolls. The river Arlanzón runs through its centre and you can walk alongside it for quite a way, leaving the city behind.

Short walks in the city centre include the Paseo del Espolón and the Paseo de la Isla, the latter home to a small botanical garden and some fabulous trees. I apologise in advance if I’ve forgotten the whereabouts of each photo, there are some spots that I really can’t remember. Serves me right for taking so long to write this post!

Another pleasant walk is to the Burgos castle. The castle dates back to the ninth century but it was almost completely destroyed with explosives by the French army when they decided to leave the castle in 1813. What on earth is the matter with some people?!?!?! Still, it’s worth visiting and you’ll also be rewarded with some spectacular views of the city. From what I recall we walked up one way and came down another, but I’m not 100% certain.

During our 1 week stay in Burgos we only used the car on one day, on a trip of local towns (more on that in a bit). It’s not easy to get bored in Burgos, there are lots of things to do and see. We visited the Museo de Burgos, in the Casa de Miranda (a palace from the sixteenth century) and the Casa de Íñigo Angulo (also from the same century). The first is home to the prehistoric and archaeological section. In the latter you’ll find the Bellas Artes (fine arts) exhibition. There is also a room for temporary exhibitions, whilst we were there they were showing work from Rufo Criado. I’d never heard of him but it was worth a gander 😁. Entrance to the whole museum is 1€. Bargain!

I don’t seem to have any photos of the Fine Art section, I don’t think it was really my scene. I prefer modern art and this was Renaissance and the likes. Sorry about that.

We also came across another exhibition, this one in one of Burgos’ most emblematic monuments. The Arco de Santa María is one of the tower-gates of the old walls of the city. Dating back to the fourteenth century, the building is one of the most visited in Burgos. The building is beautiful but I had no idea there was an exhibition inside and was pleasantly surprised when I saw what it was: La Divina Comedia en el Arte (The Divine Comedy in Art). Fabulous!!

The last exhibition we saw was the most poignant. Set in part of the Burgos Cathedral, the Museo sin Hogar (museum without a home) was a temporary exhibition, finishing on the 9th of January this year. It shows the life of people without a home, whilst also giving them a voice and showing what it’s like to live on the streets. Fifty homeless people, along with people from different charities, created the artwork. It seemed like they’d had help from different artists but this wasn’t the case. The creativity was incredible. But we both left the exhibition in silence, feeling extremely sad and hopeless, while at the same time incredibly lucky and grateful for what we have.

Whilst we’re on the subject of the Cathedral I might as well tell you a little bit about it. It dates back to 1221 and is a rather impressive structure. Here is the website if you’d like more info, it’s only in Spanish though. We’re not really into churches or cathedrals but seeing that on Tuesdays there is free entrance from 5pm to 6pm (I think) we thought we’d go and have a look, along with quite a few other cheapskates 😂. If I remember correctly the entrance fee is around 10€ at any other time.

Understandably, all this walking and sightseeing works up an appetite 😁. We were grateful to find a couple of lovely veggie/vegan restaurants, mainly because red meat is the main ingredient on the menus of most establishments in Burgos. Neither me nor my tummy are too fond of it.

Firstly there is Gaia, a vegan restaurant that only opens at lunchtime, it’s extremely advisable to book (Facebook page here). We ate there twice and both times thoroughly enjoyed it. When we visited they had a 4 course menu (no a la carte) for 14€. This includes filtered water. They don’t serve coffee or infusions. Here are a few pics of our scrumptious food.

Another lovely restaurant we came across was Masala Natural (Facebook page here, website here). This is an organic shop, cafeteria and restaurant combined. All the food they serve is organic and they have a daily menu for 20€ which includes filtered water and homemade bread. There are meat options too but it’s mainly veggie. Gluten free dishes are also an option. We also ate here twice.

A quick mention also to Cúrcuma (Facebook page here), another organic shop/cafeteria we were lucky to find, although we didn’t eat there. They serve a fabulous vegan matcha latte, it was so good I had to return a second time 😊.

As well as vegetarian restaurants, we did venture to a few typical Burgos eateries, especially at night. Burgos is well known for its tapas, there are a few streets that are renowned for bars selling massive selections of “pintxos” and tapas. Calle San Lorenzo, Calle de los Herreros, Calle Sombrería, etc, are just a few of the places where you’ll be pushed to find a seat in the more popular bars. Nevertheless, that doesn’t seem to bother the locals, they just eat standing up in any free space they can find.

Without a doubt, Burgos is a fantastic place to visit. It can get quite chilly in the winter, although we were quite lucky, it only went below zero on our last day there. In fact, one of the days, the day we had a wee road trip around local towns, the temperatures went up to 18 degrees centigrade. But that’s not the norm, if you go in the winter make sure you take your woolies (and wellies) with you.

Moving on to our tour of local villages. We planned a circular route, visiting small towns that are considered some of the most beautiful of the Burgos Province. And beautiful they are, breathtakingly so. Here are the photos I took. Firstly, the village of Valdelateja.

Obviously, we had to have a quick stroll to the “cascada” (waterfall) that we were informed was 200 metres away.

Soon after, we reached the town of Orbaneja del Castillo. We weren’t prepared for what awaited us there, despite having seen a couple of photos online. Orbaneja is a medieval town with a waterfall running through it. I had never seen anything like it. We stood there in awe for the first few minutes, contemplating the beauty of the place. My photos don’t do it justice, it’s magnificent.

Besides the photos, I also took a short video of the waterfall. Hopefully you’ll get more of an idea of how picturesque it is.

Once we’d taken a few hundred photos of Orbaneja (no exaggeration), it was time to continue our journey to the next town on our route. Puentedey, a small village of only 48 inhabitants, has a natural bridge, through which the river Nela runs. This is the main attraction of the town. Nevertheless it’s still worth having a stroll through the streets of one of Burgos’ prettiest towns.

Close to the town of Puentedey, only a 20 minute walk away, there is another waterfall, the Cascada de la Mea. Despite being on a tight schedule we thought we’d check it out. Instead of walking from Puentedey, we took our car to a small car park only 200 metres from the supposed waterfall. It’s an easy walk along a thin track, through woods of maple trees, oak trees, willows, etc. However, once we’d reached the area where the waterfall should have been we were greeted with lots of dry rocks. It seems the waterfall only forms at the end of winter and the beginning of spring, when the snow on the mountains melts. But still, we had a lovely little stroll.

Our next and final stop was Frías, also considered one of Burgos’ most beautiful towns. It too is incredibly picturesque. We arrived as the sun was going down and I think this added to its charm. There is a wonderfully preserved medieval bridge, a castle, various churches and chapels,… And like Cuenca, it has its own hanging houses. But the whole village is extremely pretty.

Seeing that our holiday was so long ago, I don’t think I did too bad in remembering most of it. However, there are quite a few photos that I’m not going to publish. I just can’t recall when or where they were taken. Since our holiday in Burgos, we also had a short break in Delta de l’Ebre (hopefully there will be a post on that soon). While writing this post I found myself mixing the two places up!!

Before our trip, we booked a night’s stay in Albarracín, so we could stop there on our way back home from Burgos. We like to break the long journey up, also prolonging our holiday as much as possible. I had visited this beautiful town back in 2012 but Pep had never been. My memories of the place weren’t that clear so it was the perfect excuse to return.

The hotel Doña Blanca is situated in a great spot to visit the town, it even has free parking which we were grateful for. Although we were only staying for one night we thought it best to investigate Albarracín’s best restaurants beforehand. So a couple of days prior to our stop we booked a table at Restaurante El Serón (Facebook page here). It had good reviews so we thought we’d give it a go. Luckily we did book, during the festive season it can be hard to get a table in one of the town’s many restaurants. The food was lovely by the way.

Well, I think that’s more than enough for one sitting. But before I go, if you don’t follow this blog’s Facebook page, where I often post little snippets of what’s going on around here, I’ll quickly tell you about our two peafowl. If you’re new to this blog you can find out how we came to acquire these two beautiful birds on my post here.

During the spring the peahen laid a few eggs, just like she did last year. This year though I let her lay on them. Although I thought that the male still wouldn’t be fertile, one of the eggs hatched. Obviously the male is fertile!! The reason I didn’t think he would be fertile is that he still doesn’t seem to have all his tail feathers.

However, the male became a tad aggressive towards the chick and I had to separate them. The mum and peachick are enclosed in the run, while the dad has free rein of all our land (and occasionally the neighbours!) He is really most amusing. It’s almost like having a dog. I had no idea peafowl liked company so much. He comes to see me while I’m doing yoga outside on these lovely summer mornings. He also sits with us when we’re having our breakfast on the terrace, demanding I give him some of my pumpkin seeds.

When either Pep or I are out in the “huerta” he likes to accompany us and scrapes around for grubs. During the afternoon, while I’m writing this post, he likes to spy on me through the dining room window! Once it’s dusk he’ll fly up on to our roof and stay there for the night. I’ve been told that peacocks can be quite noisy, instead, he doesn’t make much noise at all. Thank goodness.

I’m hoping, once the peachick is old enough, that I’ll let them all out so they can have full run of the place. But I’ll have to wait and see. For now, mum and baby seem very content.

Ok, now I’m definitely off. Hopefully I’ll be back in the not too distant future to tell you about our trip to Delta de l’Ebre. We have a busy summer with our “huerta” and our music gigs, but I’ll do my best. That’s if I can remember anything about our holiday! Thanks for reading. Take care you lot. Love Georgie and Pep xxx