Walked today: 3.7 mi. Camino’26: 95 mi.
We almost never have breakfast before walking on the Camino. It’s a habit we reached early on to get ahead of the sun. Leaving in the dark, before most breakfast servers were awake made breakfast a non-option. Later on, it seemed that walking on an empty stomach, extending our fast from our last food the day before was a more healthy idea, so we stayed with it.
Many of the places we stay have offered a take-out breakfast the night before, but we declined (even though it was frequently included with the room price), thinking our later breakfast stop would also serve as a nice break after a couple hours of walking in the dark or in daylight.
Today’s plan is to catch the 8:52 bus to Burgos, skipping a walk of 23 miles (3 days walking, for us) and end up in Tardajos, just on the other side of Burgos. It was drizzling when we left the hotel to walk the 200 yards to the bus stop.
The half-hour bus ride got us to the Burgos bus station at 9:30, where we searched for and quickly found a guy with a big “i” on the back of his jacket.
He helpfully informed us there was a bus to Tardajos at 1:15 p.m. He also told us to be there at 1:00. He said we couldn’t buy a ticket in advance… we would pay the driver when we boarded. To add “exceptionalness” to his level of help, he pointed to the bay where the bus would be waiting, pronounced the name of the bus company and confirmed the color of the bus for us. These two untested, bus traveling pilgrims became instantly charged with confidence in being able to execute the “bus to Tardajos” task!
We now had 3 hours to kill in one of our favorite cities. What to do? What to do?We began by walking a half-block to an ATM to augment our EURO cash stash, which went so well, we gave each other a high five.
Over the span of 8 caminos, we have gotten to Burgos by bus, by taxi and by walking around the airport and through an industrial area on the way into the city. We have never walked in via the alternate Camino path along the Rió Arlanzón river. So we decided to use some of our “waiting time” to see what it was like by walking from the Catedral along the river about a mile and a half, then returning along the same path, imagining what it would be like walking into Burgos this way.
Conclusion: The next time we walk jnto Burgos we will definitely take the river path.
We still had 90 minutes of wait time when we returned to the Catedral area.
We walked and reminisced around some of the areas where we have stayed on previous caminos, stopped at a small bar for a ColaCao and restroom break, took some photos of the exterior of our favorite Catedral, made a short visit to Iglesia de San Nicólas de Bari (St. Nicolas aka. Santa Claus) and then worked our way back to the bus station where we waited the final few minutes for our bus.
The 20 minute bus ride to Tardajos was uneventful. We checked in to La Fabrica, took our waiting backpacks to our room and returned to the hostal restaurant for a 3:00 main meal.
The food was ok and the ambience was not the same as our previous visit on our first camino in 2014. We returned to our room, followed our normal routine and looked forward to our walk tomorrow and another day on the Camino Frances.
Jimandi 