The City of Churches

Entrance to a part of the city

On Friday, the ISA girls and I headed to Burgos for a day trip. The weather this week has been unusually cold, and my language friend informed me the day before our trip that Burgos is the coldest city in Spain...great. The trip is about 2 hours on bus, and I was thankfully able to sleep the whole way, because the night before we had been out late at a fiesta. Once we arrived, we grabbed some coffee before we started our tour. At first the weather wasn't too bad, but then the wind picked up it was freezing! Coming from Minnesota, I'm usually the hearty one on the pack...but after spending a couple months here in 50 degree weather, I'm afraid I have gotten soft and the 30 degree weather was almost unbearable. Geno, our program director, is from Burgos so it was nice having her as our tour guide. We walked around the town, and she told us some history of the city and we walked up this hill where there is a castle that Napoleon stayed for a while and such. Afterward, we went to this small modern art museum, which only locals really know about. We saw this exhibit by a french artist named Georges Rousse, who might be my new favorite artist. His work is a mixture of paint, architecture, and photography which is put together in a way that makes almost optical illusion type art...it's amazing so you should all check him out! After the museum, we walked around a little, and I had heard from my host mom that Geno's family owned a restaurant in Burgos so I asked if we could go visit it. Well, it turns out that Geno's family owns one of the most famous, upscale restaurants in Burgos and the prince has even ate there! We didn't get to eat there because it was too expensive, but we got a tour of the place from her aunt, plus some free pastries so that was fun! For lunch we went to a little bar down the street that served a sorts of little sandwiches and tapas for 1 euro. After lunch, we went to the Cathedral, which is what Burgos is known for. It was absolutely huge and elaborate. I'm not a huge fan of exploring churches and such, but the guide was nice and had fun and interesting little facts that made the tour a little more bearable. We finished our excursion by going back to Geno's families restaurant for churros and chocolate.

Cathedral in Burgos

Inside the Cathedral

We have been here for two months, so I pretty much feel acclimated to the culture here, but there are still some weird things about Spain in general that are hard to get accustomed to. After I got back from Burgos, I found out that Summer had invited our three other friends over to our house for a girls night in. We didn't think that this would be a problem at all, because we had friends over in the past without a problem. However, we found out after a long lecture from Jone, that guests who are not family are really only allowed to stay over for under an hour, and it is completely unacceptable for anyone to ever sleepover at the house. Our mom is usually very laid back, it was a big surprise to see how adamant Spaniards are about people in their living space. After this surprise, we decided yesterday that we should have an American day, because everyone was getting a little homesick. We went to a huge mall in Portugalete, which is basically mirrored exactly like an American mall, food court and everything. We ate nachos with fake cheese, slushies, and ranch chicken wraps with french fries. It was nice spending a day with the girls in the same way we would be if we were in the US..a definite cure for homesickness! I have a lot of homework piling up for this week, but only a couple short weeks until break! Can't wait!

written by  Laura Hanson on March 14, 2010 from Burgos, Spain
from the travel blog: Un Semestre en España
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