Today is our 4th year wedding anniversary & it is also National Spanish Day. So we took a Zero day, but we did some walking around the city doing the usual tourists stuff. Had the hotel do some clothes washing for us – the simplest pleasures of life! Clean, sweet smelling clothes to wear!

Mr D really wanted to go see the Human Evolution Museum so we went there in the morning. It is 4 levels & took 1.5 hrs to walk through it. Plus it was free today & we got our Pilgrim passport books stamped as they MUST be stamped every day! ( one of the lectures from the lady way back in Estella ) The first level was the most interesting, showing the earliest human remains found in Atapuerca.

Then we sat down for a relaxing lunch in one of the squares. The city was very quiet & most shops were closed besides the cafe / restaurants.

Then we went for a tour in the grand Burgos Cathedral. It is truly gobsmacking & you have to be there, photos don’t do it justice. And you won’t see anything like it in Australia! So we were both keen to pay to look inside.

After that, Mr D retired for an afternoon siesta & I walked up to the Burgos castle & had a look around there. What remains of the castle is interesting but I would of liked to have seen the underground fortress!

Dinner came highly recommended by the hotel receptionist even through we couldn’t get a meal until after 8.30pm. Walking through the city was crazy again as everyone in Burgos seem to be in the hub – just a normal evening in Spain. The restaurant was a sure winner & worth waiting for! Even through it was a little pricey – it was our anniversary after all! The place so very upmarket that Mr D didn’t think it was appropriate to ask for Pilgrim rates! And as a surprise, the couple from Israel were seating near us & the man came over to greet us. We hadn’t really talked to them but exchanged pleasantries over the the last week passing each other on the Camino. As we left way past our bedtime after 10pm, the streets were still busy with families, dogs, kids, babies, grandmas, grandpas…… It is a different way of life over here.

So we have made it to the end of our first stage of The Camino, the physical conditioning part. Mr D is feeling quite anxious with the second stage – emotional reflection & conquering The Meseta. Let the next stage begin!