We stayed here for two nights and so today we strolled around the city of Leon for the morning and then went up into the mountains for the afternoon. Breakfast was in a local cafe and was the last piece of tortilla, bread and coffee - all quite nice and shared with 4 Portuguese painters whose choice was a beer each, seven 'gos' on the fruit machine....quick double espresso and then a fag: then they toddled off to work!
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| Leon Cathedral at 9.30pm |
Leon is a sort-of Spanish version of Cambridge. 13th Century cathedral - very dark, very opulent inside and beautiful in a gothic perspective. Here's a pic we took in the evening sunshine at 9.30 while being asked for cash by various 'beggars' while we sipped our (expensive) beers and tapas.
We walked quite a lot looking for somewhere to eat and eventually ended up in a bar where we had squid and huge langoustines washed down with plenty of Verdejo white vino - crisp and cold and very easy to consume too swiftly and cheap enough to order more and more!
In the morning we went to see Leon in the morning and supplemented our breakfast with frequent coffees and freshly squeezed orange juice.
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| Cathedral with city wall and house built-in |
The city wall is really old and has houses built in all the way. The Cathedral kind of grows out of it too and everything seems connected physically. The streets were virtually deserted till about 11am when, quite suddenly, there seemed to be lots of folk competing for coffee and beer - all a bit early for us but we did keep up with the coffee part of the competition.
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| Debbie and Senor Gaudi |
Close to the Cathedral is a house/building which was designed by Gaudi (of Familia Sagrada Catherdral in Barcelona fame) and outside his amazing creation was a bronze bench with him drawing the very building he created. It seems everyone has a photo sitting next to him so we did one too!
After lunch - actually we were so full of coffee and extra stuff that we didn't actually eat till later - we went on a mountain ride. This was 126 miles on really spectacular roads past lakes and through quite big mountains. Bends abounding and the following photos show, to some degree, what it was all about. Having got back we tucked into the 65cent litre bottle of beer we'd bought earlier and (like the cheap-skates we are) had put in the fridge rather than pay 1E50 each for tiny little apologies in a bar....
Here're the photos.
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| Tunnel on the road around the lake |
We rode around a huge lake - probably took us an hour but was really beautiful. Roads varied between amazingly smooth to jaw-jarring-bumpy!
This bridge supported the motorway which we elected not to go on and instead rode around the lake. We went under the right hand end about 10 mins after tis photo was taken and then (if it works) we did the same bit of road returning which you can see in the video at the end.
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| Stork field |
Another quite cool thing was that one of the big eagle-like birds suddenly dropped out of the sky just in front to us (while we were travelling at about 90kmh) and was obviously in on the kill. In fact he/she dropped just in front of us onto the road to scoop up a road kill. He missed but also avoided being flattened by a bloody great Goldwing.
Anyway the last thing is that the roads were so absolutely amaxing (sorry....er....Basque spelling) and Debbie took load of videos (er....now she knows how to!) and here's one of them. I'm hoping this works as it's quite a big file.
This is the return to Leon from the mountains....well...in the mountains coming up to the lake and aforementioned bridge.
