The next cathedral after Burgos is in León (english: lion)....and what a cathedral! Built in the XIII century, when León only had 5'000 inhabitants, according to my guide "it is a pearl of neo-gothic architecture". According to my humble understanding, this means basically that the architects at the time discovered more lofty, higher ways of building than the Romans, resulting in more windows, light and higher towers. Also according to the guide, in that century alone, 200 cathedrals were erected in Europe.
After visiting the historic center including well preserved city walls, palaces, churches, a basilica (by importance: chapel, church, basilica and cathedral) and all the history of the ancient kingdom of León -covering in XII century half of Europe, from today's Portugal to Switzerland- Leon invites people to visit its Barrio Húmedo, humid quarter: 5 streets full of bars, pubs and restaurants, serving -what a surprise- original and fresh tapas and good local wines: After all, we are getting nearer to El Bierzo, a region that produces excellent wines, not yet commercialized abroad, but arguably as good as La Rioja. Back to Barrio Húmedo, infamously famous in northern Spain for going out. Hence, I was looking for a bid of party (Saint Jakob, forgive me!) and in good Spanish tradition, I started a pub crawl at 23h, just after dinner .... and found all the Barrio rather empty: Talking to bartenders (rather than myself, or walls for instance) they said it was very quite today, also due to economic crisis, people don't go out... it's shockingly sad .... Well, I will see what happens today, Friday. PS. You may ask yourself, why I talked to bartenders and not other pilgrims: There are none at that time of the night, 98% sleep in hospices and have curfew of 22h, if religious hospice 21h even....Basically when Spaniards start to dinner!
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