Travels thru Life: 9/29 -- Leon and Astorgos

This morning, we explored Leon, home to another cathedral and church on the Camino de Santiago. We started in the Cathedral Square but moved along to the Real Colegiata de St. Isidro, following part of the Camino, until the cathedral opened. There is a mass here everyday at 7:30 am and 7 pm for pilgrims to be blessed (and to collect their stamps). We were instructed not to talk while inside because silence improved the opportunity for contemplation, but photos were acceptable.

Outside of the Cathedral we visited later

Interesting building seen from Cathedral
Square -- built by Gaudi, we visited it later.

Real Colegiata de St. Isidro

The entrance we used shows a bull and bear protectors.

Inside the church

The arches inside looked interesting.

Another indication you are on the Camino de Santiago

Outside the Colegiata was the old Roman wall. Romans came to this area around 20 BC, looking
for gold. In 63 AD, they founded Leon, actually named for the 7th Legion here, which eventually got elided to Leon, a completely different word (Lion). The original walls were wood, so what we saw were the second walls of stone. There were also footsteps of bronze along the street -- only left feet. They represented the steps of the Legions, who started off marching on their left feet.

Old Roman wall

The Roman soldier's foot

Unique way to be sure you are not tempted
to turn right on red. We may need some
in the US....

Casa de los Botines, the house Antoni Gaudi built for a family

St George slaying a dragon that looks more
like an alligator.


Statue of Gaudi on a park bench outside the house.

Then we headed back toward the Cathedral, up one of the main streets with restaurants.

An Elvis statue outside a store

Main street with interesting dining options.

Back in Cathedral Square, we learned about the significance of the building entry and then went inside to look around. They were getting ready for a free concert the next day, so there was quite a bit of work going on. They were also in the midst of a multi-year project to clean the stained glass windows and replace the original lead framing with bronze. There were two enormous scaffolds up high so the work could proceed with minimal disruption. The windows were desperate for cleaning. The ones waiting to be washed were practically black with soot.

The statue between the doors is a replica to
save the original, now inside, from further
destruction from the weather.

Just above the doors, the images on the right show the folks
consigned to hell.

You can see scaffolds for the windows to the left and right.
There are a tremendous number of stained glass windows
here. I only photographed the cleaned ones.

One of 4 rose windows.

The organist reviewing settings for the concert. He wouldn't
play anything for us. There were 4 pipe banks in the choir
area, two on each side.

This is the original Mary statue from the entry.

We now had about 4 hours until our next adventure, but lunch typically starts at 1, so we wandered the old streets and I found a shirt to buy. We stopped at one of the places with English menus, but after we spent some time figuring out what we wanted, we discovered we were too early and walked back to the hotel along the river bank. There were 4 pathways, 3 in the park, and we took the one closest to the water and discovered some fun statues, apparently designed for kids to play on, and made out of logs.

An alligator

Two horses

Fanciful street light

At 3:30, we hopped on the bus and headed to Astorga, famous for Roman walls and another Gaudi building, intended to be the residence and office of a bishop. Gaudi started work and built quite a bit of it until the bishop died. Later, someone else completed the building but it was never lived in. It has a restrained (for Gaudi) exterior and very creative use of arches and posts to create a living space with relatively few walls. We also explored the basement, which housed a display of Roman and other ancient artifacts. We walked through the town to get another stamp on our pilgrim passport, finding more Roman ruins. On the way to the bus, Jim procured another eclair in hopes of finding one as good as the one we had in Paris in 2002 and Brugge in 2013. Back on the bus, we headed to Leon to take several members of the group to service for the blessing of pilgrims which they reported was quite moving.