5 - 5/5/2015 On to Burgos

 Tuesday, May 5

Our next to last full day in Spain, heading through the historic towns of Avila and Segovia on the way to Burgos. Driving on the motorways illustrates how much of northern Spain is wide open space, just vast flatlands and hills of grass and trees and very green. Much more attractive than driving on I-5 between Sacramento and LA, particularly now that there's no water. Another clear/puffy-cloud day. Traffic on the roads has been zilch, holiday or no holiday. But we can see that some of our stops have acres of parking ready when the "in" season begins. Now it's often only us and a few other stragglers.  

Avila was up first, it's claim to fame being having the best preserved walled city in Europe. We'll say amen to that - the stone work looked as new. We drove through one of the gates into the city and soon were faced with twisting lanes the width of a size 12 shoe, most of them one way, mercifully. Let us out of here! And the Peugeot's SatNav did its best, except when an indicated turn was into a wide stairway or dumpster alcove. But in retrospect even more horrible was the underground parking garage we had at our hotel back in Toledo. Sure, city space is at premium, but access to the garage was through a metal door and directly into a fairly steep down ramp in a narrow corridor at the foot of which was a right hand turn into a low ceilinged garage containing more pillars than the Temple of Karnak. The car's electric side mirrors had to be folded close in. The car had to be maneuvered between pillars and other parked cars already jammed there. And we had to go to the second level down which meant two more right angle turns. On top of it all, the walls at all of the right angle turns were terribly disfigured from prior car scrapes. Pam earned her navigator stripes by standing outside and making more hand signals than the guy who brings planes in to land on an aircraft carrier deck. As a "bonus" the garage was claustrophobic, with the second level ceiling even lower than the one above. For this we paid €9.50 per night. So driving through Avila was perhaps not so bad.

Next up was Segovia, with one of the best preserved Roman aqueducts and an alcazar (castle) said to be the inspiration for Disney's Cinderella's Castle. Hmmmm - seems like some castle in Germany also has a claim to that inspiration. Again, tourists were light compared to what these sites were prepared for.
 

 

On the other side of the aquaduct was a carousel.

And this was the castle that looked like right out of Disneyland:

Standing at The Four Posts looking at the walled city:

Loved watching this artist as he painted:

We booked one night at Hotel Meson del Cid - great location next to the cathedral.

 The Burgos Cathedral: