New Year´s Eve in Leon: final part

On January first we awake when we wanted. We had for breakfast the great tiramisu done by Pochola.

For lunch Montse made her delicious Escudella, she even had the nice detail of doing it with alphabet soup! :D Pochola done a magnific Fillet Wellington and also leftovers of the dinner. (We had turkey for the whole weekend!).

After lunching, David, Susanna, Curro and I went to walk a bit around Leon´s City Center, the rest stayed at home playing.

The day before David and Susanna had a “tour” with their friend at the City Center as well, so they were our guides! :P here part of the beauties we saw in our tour:



Royal Collegiate Church of St Isidore of Seville, León:





The Cathedral:



We went to drink something to warm us into the pub "Big John´s Jazz Club" that has the specialty of playing just jazz music of the 40´s to the 70´s.




After that we continue with our tour:

The Bethelem:



Where we also did the “asking for a wish ritual”







The Leon´s raised-relief map:



We were a while watching the audiovisual presentation that Caja de España played at Botines, a Gaudi house:







We went trough the Xmas market and turned back to the flat… where we found Montse, Gloria, Pochola and Topo locked in! And not… it wasn´t a punishment due the night before! (or well, I really don´t know… you see, the last one locking the door was Patxi!) ;P He said the point was that we should lock the door or it opens so easily, so, when he went out, he just forgot nobody of them had a key as well! :D

We played a bit, take the dinner (a salad done with the leftovers, a great Spanish omelet done by Patxi and pantumaca done a bit by all of us) some of us went to sleep a bit early… we had a tourney the next day!

Walking in… Burgos, Spain: for Xmas

Burgos is a precious city at the north of Spain. Curro´s family lives there, so we go there time to time and spend some time during Xmas and/or New Year Eve as well.

This time we went for Xmas and had a walk at the old part of the city, which is my favorite one.

Here our walk with day light:





And here with the magic of the night lights:





Burgos is famous due it´s cathedral. I like the whole city, actually I don´t understand why it is not more promoted as touristic place. I invite you to visit it!

Bogota Second Part: Doing a Bit of Tourism

We arrived in Bogotá just 2 days before the World Championship, trying to have at least one day for recovering from the jet lag. The other Spanish players were arriving or the same day or the day after, some of them went few days to places like Cartagena de Indias before the Championship (smart people!) ;)

So, actually Topo and I will have just 1 morning for doing tourism due we´ll participate in a Tourney that will start the afternoon before the Championship day.

We went to the Salt Mines in Zipaquirá, in a tour, with more Scrabble people. We went in a micro bus, so it was just our group.


The visit at the mines was really nice. They even have a Cathedral and a theater there.










Going back to Bogotá, as part of the tour, we went to an emeralds factory and then we went back to the hotel, but we can go walking from there, enjoying part of the tourist area of Bogotá, but some of us had the Nations Cup that will start that afternoon.

The day after we had some free hours, so Alvaro, Topo and I went to a mall with 3 objectives: mine: to buy a pin at the Hard Rock Caffe :P (yeap, I collect them), Alvaro´s one: to taste the best Colombian coffee and to find out a toys´ store with the Scrabble travel version :D (but I´m afraid we didn´t found it).

We went by taxi and it was quite interesting to see the things that made Topo and Alvaro to be curious about. It was their first experience in a Latin American Country and things like traffic, old cars, old trucks, black smoke from cars, old and crowded, really crowded buses, the color of the houses, the way people dress; impacted them both.



The special part was about how to know where to find the best Colombian coffee… so, I asked to a shop assistant on one of the visited stores and he tell us the best place was right there at the lobby of the mall, a Juan Valdez coffee shop! I should say it was the first time I heard about Juan Valdez coffee… but was funny due right after coming back to Madrid, I found out a lot of them! :D (Really no idea if they were there before, but if that´s the case, it means I less observant of what I thought I was! :$ ).



(To be continued).