León and the Surrounding Area

I don't want to write very much, so here are some pictures from my two-day trip up to León and the surrounding region:

 The huge cathedral in Leon. Its construction began in 1205 and its highest point is 78 meters. It is the cathedral with the second greatest amount of stained glass in Europe, and it has the most stained glass per square meter of any cathedral.

 Cathedral

 Cathedral

 Basilica of San Isidoro. They were doing some construction/restoration of it, so the main entrance was fenced off.

 Convent of San Marcos. Today, the building is occupied by a luxury hotel.

 Convent of San Marcos

 Convent of San Marcos

 

A church in León

  

Sign marking the Camino de Santiago in Villafranca del Bierzo, which is one of the towns the trail goes through.

 The castle

 A balloon that we found in the street and played with for about an hour while walking around the town.

 Some guys building. It seemed like everywhere we went there was a fair amount of construction or restoration going on.

 A church

 Clouds. It was cloudy the whole trip, and all of the clouds were very close to the ground, making them more fog than cloud.

 Otherside of the church

 Another old building

 

A different old building

This was an old house. Unfortunately I can't remember what this type of house is called, but they used to be very common in north-western Spain. Anyway, I found it to be a lot bigger on the inside than it appeared from the outside, which I found interesting. Also, hidden inside this one was a bar and restaurant where we ended up eating lunch, which for me consisted of crepes filled with fried spinach and pine nuts as a first course and pigs cheeks as a second course. Overall, quite tasty.

These would be found next to the houses. They were used to store grain in the winter.

Chestnut trees covered in lichen.

One of the trees close up.

Mushrooms sprouting up from between old leaves and chestnuts

Path covered in fallen leaves and chestnuts

View from the top of a hill above Balboa.

View looking the other direction

View of the whole town from above. As you can see, the town was quite small

The other house.

A chair and chicken inside a museum in town. The whole upper floor consisted of somewhat abstract art made out of wood cut down from around town. It was incredibly intricate and cool.

 

A church in the last town we stopped in. Unfortunately it was dark so we only spent about 5 minutes there and this was the only building that was really lighted on the outside.

Well, that is all. Goodbye