My Birthday Trip

My wife put together a YouTube video (8 mins) of the trip we took last month in celebration of my 70^th birthday.  Highlights of what we saw include the Roman villas of La Tejada and Olmeda (3^rd-4^th cen. AD), the Gothic cathedral at Burgos (mostly 15^th-16^th cens.), a casona in Burgos where the Reyes Catolicos Isabel and Fernando received Christopher Columbus (on my birthday in 1497!),  an amazing “bubble hotel” where we stayed near Tirig, the Mesolithic/Neolithic rock shelter paintings at Valltorta (ca. 10,000-8,000 BCE; the video has reconstructions of the Levantine Art paintings from the Valltora museum because the paintings in the rock shelters are quite faded and impossible to photograph), the elaborate tomb of Queen Isabel’s parents at Cartuja de Miraflores (carved by the Flemish sculptor Gil de Siloé between 1489 and 1493), the Paleolithic site of Atapuerca where remains of early hominids and Neanderthals have been found (dating from 1.3 million to 500,000 years ago; on display in Burgos’ amazing Museum of Human Evolution), and the reconstructed Iberian town at Calafell (5^th-2^nd cens. BCE) on the Mediterranean.