We stayed at the Hostal Hispano. Despite being only 1 star it was very acceptable and the staff were super helpful, even turning the heating back on for a couple hours to dry our stuff out.
My room overlooked a disused building in the middle of a maze of small streets and cut-throughs. Today was promised to be dry so it was a little concerning that it started raining as we headed to breakfast. Thankfully this was short lived. It was dry but pretty cold as we headed out of town by crossing the River Najerilla.
It was uphill, as ever, as we walked out of town with some blue skies to motivate us. Mike tried to pull the sword from the stone – a commemorative one for the Battle of Nájera (1367) during the First Castilian Civil War.
Today was a day of walking mainly through fields of barley, whet of peas – not many vines or olive trees in sight. But the sun came out occasionally and the views of the rolling countryside were lovely to see. We saw a small Stonechat sitting on the grass (they are only 13 grams) – chatting!
The walk was a long gravelly path with a few climbs but nothing too strenuous. We stopped for coffee and cake at the top of the only lengthy climb before beginning the long descent into Santo Domingo. In the distance, on our left, some of the mountains still retained some snow.
As we had arrived pretty early we took some time to have a look inside the cathedral which was first opened in 1235. There are some fairly impressive mosaics in the basement and the last photo shows two chickens (real ones) – these are supposedly descendants of the two beheaded, cooked chickens resurrected (a miracle attributed to Santo Domingo) to testify in favour of a pilgrim wrongly accused of theft. We enjoyed some lunch a the short period of real sunshine before checking into our hotel.
You guys stayed in a 1 star place???
Frequently lol