Back on the road after a quick visit to Logroño, we drove to Burgos. Burgos, known as one of the colder Spanish cities in the winter, impressed us with the most overwhelmingly beautiful Gothic cathedral, Burgos Cathedral. The old city was well-kept with beautiful Gothic architecture and plane trees that line the park along side the river. I could have spent an additional hour touring the cathedral which is immense with endless smaller chapels, all with unique significance. The highlight for us, was the chapel dedicated to St. Catherine. Unfortunately the audio tour was quite dry and the kids quickly become bored. We hustled out to ride the city train tour which ended up to be not as interesting as our prior train ride in Avignon. We ate lunch at a traditional table-cloth covered restaurant near the cathedral filled with large French families and tired to patiently wait for our food. The prevailing motif when eating in Europe is the overall slow pace of service. I am not sure if this is just because as Americans we are much less patient. We are working on this...

From Burgos, we spent the night in Valladolid, which is a working class town, that was a good stopping point for us so we could head to Segovia the next morning to pick up at Spanish residency cards. This was our second time in Segovia, so we knew the easiest parking garage to get to and how to navigate our way through this tourist town to get to the police station. This town had been our first overnight stop after arriving abroad and even the second time round, it did not disappoint. The Plaza Mayor is picturesque this time with a full blown market taking place. We got our ticket for the queue at the police station and were helped shortly afterwards by a police officer who had been there when we came in 2 months ago. The office was much quieter this time with the majority of the staff out for the August holiday. After proving that we were the same Americans who had stopped in 2 months earlier with another set of finger prints , we were given our residency cards. On our way out of town, Katherine and I came upon a shop selling scarfs that were on sale, so we both got a scarf souvenir. We still have yet to visit the cathedral in Segovia and will need to wait until friends/family come to visit. Then, Spanish ID obtained, we headed back in the car to return to the north coast to the town of Gijon.