We took a day trip to a city north of us, Burgos last weekend.   I wanted to go visit the Castle ruins that are there as they have siege tunnels underground you can walk through and large winding stone staircases.  It wasn’t a must-see attraction online or even by reviewers.  Many reviewers had said it would have been way cooler and the siege tunnels even better had the damn French and Napoleon not blow the place up.  Unfortunately, by the time we found our way to castle it was closed.  We missed it by a few minutes! Argh!  There was a complete lack of signage to the castle.  It was clear the the castle ruins was not a major tourist attraction but nonetheless, I was disappointed.  We did find a rather impressive playground (at least for those we have seen in Spain – they are all pretty plain and generic with few pieces) that we promised we’d take the kids back to.  And after leaving the closed castle, being shuttled into one-way narrow streets and out to the main road we eventually found our way back to the playground.  I’m sure this will be the highlight that the kids remember.

We left the house late, we got lost, we had few snacks, we had no extra clothes.  It really wasn’t a well planned out trip but it did end up being a great one.  At the playground, Lavender had an accident (remember no spare clothes??) but luckily October had pants on under her dress so her pants got sacrificed to Lavender.  And while Lavender now had dry pants, she had pee soaked tennis shoes.   We leave the playground to go find the cathedral.  This is on the must-see lists so we were off to find it.  And we could see it.  But we just…couldn’t….get….there.  The snacks have all been consumed.  October’s hungry and letting us know every….three…seconds.  I continue driving in hopes of finding the cathedral, taking some pictures, finding some food and heading home.  I don’t have lofty goals at this point.  I do however find the castle, the closed castle, again in searching for the cathedral.  We find a dirt lot by the castle wall, park and head off to find food.  I’m really not hopeful.  It seems like the place is shutting down for the night.  It is a Sunday on a holiday weekend.  I see the top of the cathedral poking over some buildings and hastily snap some pictures.  I assume this is as close as I’ll get.  Lavender is holding up her pants as we hurriedly look for food, to which we stumble into a major plaza of Burgos right off the Cathedral entrance filled with holiday lights, holiday vendors and restaurants.  Burgos is known for it’s Morcilla or blood sausage.   Unfortunately, we were too hungry to try anything local.  Pizza it was!  I inadvertently ordered morcilla last time we were in Madrid (I thought it was hamburger) and it was good.  It was even October’s favorite tapa that day.  Jeff told me what it really was and I just couldn’t order a second after that.

Having our bellies full.  We were able to explore and enjoy the plaza.  It was cold.  October had a dress on and no one had their hats with them but I was the only one who seemed to mind the cold.  The girls rode the Carousal, we went for a tourist train ride around the city, the girls had a gigantic doughnut, Jeff had mulled wine, we took pictures and enjoyed seeing all the holiday vendors.  I was really glad we didn’t quit and leave after we, also, couldn’t find our way to the cathedral.  I was really glad we stuck around for the holiday lights to come on.  The town was just coming awake after dinner and we would have missed it.  And I’m really glad that October’s internal thermostat is set high!  I never could have wandered around for hours with bare legs!

See all of our photo’s here!

IMG_1704

Well she looks a little cold here. But we’re on our way back to the car!

IMG_1613 IMG_1615 IMG_1619 IMG_1635 IMG_1652

IMG_1648 IMG_1658 IMG_1663 IMG_1666 IMG_1677 IMG_1679 IMG_1686 IMG_1692 IMG_1699