10th – 13th May 2024 Sahagun to Leon

We got up relatively early and headed downstairs as breakfast was included and we hadn’t had any dinner last night.  Steve just had some dried toast and that seemed to go down quite well.  We paid for our room as the internet didn’t work last night so the EFTPOS machine wouldn’t work either.

It was a quick walk down to the Sahagun train station and the train arrived on time and we got off in Leon on schedule about 9.15am – the only thing we knew we had to do was to arrange new phone coverage as the Orange SIM cards we had bought in Bayonne had expired.  Turned out the Orange shop was just below our room in Leon on the roundabout.  They sorted new SIM cards very quickly as it was much easier to use a Spanish SIM than to try to recharge a French one.

That done we headed around the corner and asked when our room would be ready – and to our delight it was available straight away (1030H).  Upstairs in a lift that was quite small and clunks on stopping twice before the doors open – our room was great and looks straight over the fountain in the roundabout five floors below us.  As we have four nights here we just had baths, sorted out our gear and headed to sleep for a couple of hours.

 Another visit to a chemist to get more Gastrostop and we ran into a couple of people we had previously met.  They told us that Rotavirus had been rampant in the albergues and they had seen a lot of very sick people.  Steve had been getting some hydrolytes in a farmacia a day ago where there was a very sick woman in front of him who was telling the pharmacist about her problem with V & D and the pharmacist had also given her a Gastrostop type medication.  Steve wondered if he might have picked it up from her.  Needless to say, hand sanitizer went onto the list.

A supermarket visit bought us salad, tuna, oil/vinegar, pineapple chunks, beer and some fresh bread as we thought we would have a room picnic for lunch.

The next few days went past in a bit of a blur – we went to the Cathedral which was spectacular but my main desire was to return to San Isodoro and I was very surprised to see that a whole new display had been opened very recently and the tour was so much better than last time and ran in a well-ordered way.

The main focus for me was to get back to the “Sistine Chapel of Romanesque Art” that had been such a gift last time I was here.  I could not really believe it when I got a constricted throat and tears began to form when I entered.  It truly is a beautiful place and I could have sat there for hours.

For a bit of history:

The Pantheon of the Kings of León, a wonderful space known as the "Sistine Chapel of Romanesque Art", was established by order of Ferdinand I and Sancha as a royal cemetery, since 11 kings, 12 queens, 10 infants, 9 counts were buried there. and different nobles.

The capitals will draw our attention, loaded with symbolism, with scenes of the prefiguration of Christ such as Balaam's donkey or the sacrifice of Isaac as well as the first representations of Christ in our medieval art, in the resurrection of Lazarus and the healing of the leper.

But the jewels of this space are the paintings, which stand out not only for their aesthetics but also for their fresco technique that, given their technical quality, has allowed the paintings to reach our days in a wonderful state of conservation, and can be contemplated in the place for which they were created.

If you want to look further try this link: https://www.museosanisidorodeleon.com/panteon-de-los-reyes/

It is hard to believe that Napoleon’s forces used this magnificent area as a stable for four years after his troops (and others before) broke the heads off the magnificent statues nearby.  They opened all the royal tombs in the hope of finding treasure and then removed the bones and put them into one corner so they could use the bottom part of the tombs as water and feed troughs.  I still find it unbelievable that something like that could happen. 

It is my favourite place in Leon and, while the Cathedral is grand and magnificent, the intimacy of the Pantheon of Kings in San Isodoro and the quality of the art work just makes it spectacular.

We wandered around and caught up with Dawn and her sister, Nicky, before heading down Calle Ancha to find the place where I had such a great hot chocolate and churros when I was here last time.  Even Steve was impressed, and he really isn’t a great lover of sweets.  The churros were absolutely perfect, and the hot chocolate was really hot, thick and gooey. We walked for hours and finally had dinner at a little cool bar we found on our wanderings – from the outside it looked like there was no inside seating but it went down two levels inside and each level was carved from the rock so it seemed like you were in a cave.  Delicious pasta and a glass of wine each before wandering back to our hotel.

Final night dinner at Ezequiel on Calle Ancha tonight – we saw Eduardo and his wife there last night and Steve took only one glance at his steak to decide we must go there tonight!