El Cid Country and San Sebastian

September 17, 2010

Day 6

We have been waking up to good breakfasts in nice, well-set-up hotel dining rooms. Today was one of those mornings as our group readied for our journey to the Basque country, the end of the day's trip being San Sebastian, with a stop at Burgos, the land of El Cid.

It would have been awe-inspiring to be riding to Burgos with Rodrigo de Vivar on a horseback, but I know there was no way to even just traverse half way of a two hundred forty-four miles stretch of cross-country on a saddle. We took the easier way—drove to it with a more comfortable stop for lunch and WC along the way. At the stopping place, some of us had tiny sandwiches called pulgas, (meaning fleas). After we had our fill and our "relief," we continued our way to El Cid country.

We passed by castros, old settlements of granite stones. Granite stones were available in abundance then. We passed by a few castles. From our tour director, I learned that the Moors did introduce the concept of castles in Spain. This was interesting new information. She said that the weather and climate of the countryside is dessert-like, having very cold winters and very hot summers, and this reminded me of the weather and climate I once lived through in Eastern Washington, U.S.A.

To get into the mood of appreciating Burgos, we watched the movie El Cid on the bus on our way there. El Cid, meaning The Lord, was the name given to Rodericus Didaci Campidoctor (Campidoctor or Campeador means Master of the Military Arts or Champion), whose real name was Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, El Cid, a real soldier best known for his re-conquering Valencia from the Moors.

Burgos is the burial place of Rodrigo de Vivar. It is is a typical medieval town that used to be the capital of Castile. It is one of the major stops of pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela. Here we visited the beautiful, magnificent, and massive Gothic-style cathedral, the Catedral de Santa Maria or just plainly known as the Catedral de Burgos, known for its elaborate decorations, some of which were in gold leaf.

Bidding goodbye to Burgos, we then continued to San Sebastian, passing the famous Rioja wine-producing region. That evening, after two hundred forty-four miles of travel from Leon, we reached San Sebastian, known as Donotia to the Basque people. We happened to reach San Sebastian during the week of the Spanish Film Festival. People and the media were on the street and we drove into the middle of the crowd who were waiting for the celebrities, unfortunately, not us. We waved at them and they waved at us. We waved at the guests staying at the Queen Maria Christina hotel, a famous high-end hotel where celebrities mostly stayed. One of the guests expected to lodge there was Julia Roberts, eagerly anticipated, and waited for by the locals. She was expected to arrive in two days to receive her award for her movie, Come, Reza, Ama, opposite the Spaniard Javier Bardem.

Because it was already dusk when we arrived in San Sebastian, there was no time for sightseeing. We had an "included" dinner that night and spent our next relaxing nights by the Gulf of Biscay. The region is elegant and according to what I have read, it is a prosperous region. During July and September, tourist, as many as the town's population—around  180,000—flock to San Sebastian, not much for sightseeing but for its culinary attractions. It has the top tapas in all of Spain. People said that the inhabitants of San Sebastian invented tapas. Speaking of tapas, that's another interesting topic.