III. BURGOS AND THE BITTER COLD OF BURGOS

It appears to be the use in most minor cities of Spain for the best hotel to send the worst omnibus to the station, as who should say, "Good wine needs no bush." At Burgos we were almost alarmed by the shabbiness of the omnibus for the hotel we had chosen through a consensus of praise in the guide-books, and thought we must have got the wrong one. It was indeed the wrong one, but because there is no right hotel in Burgos when you arrive there on an afternoon of early October, and feel the prophetic chill of that nine months of winter which is said to contrast there with three months of hell.