We are lucky when we travel. We arrived in Burgos to find that our scheduled lodgings had been flooded and we spent 3 hours wandering around the cool, hilly streets above the cathedral, asking at every bar, knocking at every hotel and b&b with no luck. We knew about the Meson del Cid, but the guidebooks promised that it would be very expensive and we wanted to spend 3 nights in the beautiful city.

Finally we decided to ask about a room, figuring that at least the concierge would know about all the hotels in the area and might be able to point us in the right direction. Our wanting to stay 3 days in the middle of the week helped. They had one room, at the top of the hotel, small but newly redone and not expensive. We are standing in one of the most welcoming, sunny lobbies in Spain, beautiful restored to it's historical origins, smelling the afternoon casse-croute offered at the small tables in the bay windows overlooking the ancient cathedral. We were confident. We wanted the room.

The clerk wanted to be sure, however, and brought us by elevator to a tiny space tucked under the highest gable at the back of the hotel; she crossed the spotless floor, and threw open the shutters and casement window. We were spellbound. The back of the hotel drops 5 stories to the cobblestone streets. But the streets race steeply down to the valley floor. As we looked into the late afternoon, we saw an African stork sail out of the sky above the far away mountains, swoop within 100 feet of our window, and alight next to it mate, on a nest built on top of one of the delicate chimneys in the neighborhood.

The hotel was perfect. The breakfast was ample and delicious, and everything in the walled city was so easily available. We were in the cathedral before the crowds, on the ruins of the fortifications after the crowds, and had plenty of time to ferret out a dark and weathered laborer's tavern where the tables and pottery hadn't changed in a hundred years, and the menu was rabbit simmered in wine.

From the Meson it was an easy walk to the music and nightlife of Burgos, or across the bridge to the buses that carried us to the outlying areas. But when the day ended, a quiet square, the coolness of the ancient fountain, and a perfect, cool nest under the gables welcomed us back to the hotel.