That's Our Hotel?

What a difference a day makes. This gorgeous building (which at 100 metres was actually too big to fit the frame from anywhere I stood) is the Leon parador hotel. Originally a monastery, it sheltered pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. And because that pilgrimage (part religious effort, part hike) is still quite popular and because this year is a special year when a particular door is opened at Santiago de Compostela, there were a lot of pilgrim hikers with the traditional scallop shell hanging off their backpacks. In some recent years, there have been nearly 100,000 of them, on foot, bike or horse/donkey. There are many paths across Europe but all follow the yellow arrows and shell signs meant to guide them to the endpoint: the remains of St. James in Santiago de Compostela.

We saw pilgrims in a lot of places in northern Spain, but Leon is a particularly important stop for them. Here's the statue of a pilgrim outside the parador; note his shoes are off and can you blame him after 500 miles? Thank you, Nate, for using the fidelity hand symbol (learned in one museum early on); let's take it as youthful enthusiasm as opposed to some sort of sacrilegious gang symbol. The hotel inside is beautiful though we'd arrived on a weekend when the parador/monastery's museum were completely closed so we know less about it than usual.

We couldn't figure out why these musicians were in the courtyard of the parador, tuning their instruments and straightening their costumes but not actually playing. Turns out we found them later that evening, playing for at least one of the three weddings we ran into. A fancy place, Leon. Like seemingly everywhere in Spain, it was founded by the Romans. But then it was a Kingdom for a long, long time and while it's not large, it still has a kind of importance and pride to it that could have been off-putting but wasn't. We liked Leon though didn't do that much for those two days. I'd admit the significant improvement in our lodgings may have played a part in rating it as highly as we did...