So, I know I officially suck at keeping more or less up to date on this blog thing. I kind of feel like there’s more pressure to write more often with a blog, just because it’s less intrusive on people’s lives or something. So I can and should write more often because it’s not sending itself into people’s inboxes all the time and annoying them with its consistency. Does that even make sense? But whatever. I have an excuse for not writing – my internet has been down for about a week in the apartment, so it’s made my electronic communication much more sparing than usual. And actually that in and of itself is another fun story about how Spain works, but I don’t even want to get into it. It’s boring and it frustrates me. Haha.
Instead, I’ll talk about my fun weekend of trips this past weekend! It was a long weekend for everyone in Castilla y Leon (we had Monday off), the province that I work in, which meant that I had an extra long weekend, always having Fridays off. So I took advantage of it to do some serious travelling.
Friday and Saturday I went with a few friends that I’d met in Logroño last year to Zaragoza. These friends, by the way, are Ben, Abby and Marcos, and undoubtedly you’ve heard of them before. If you haven’t, then I know for sure you haven’t read anything I’ve written in the last 12 months! Haha. The bus from Burgos goes through Logroño, so I left here early on Friday morning (8:30am), picked the others up in Logroño on the way, and arrived in Zaragoza around midday. October 12th was the Día de Hispanidad and also the celebration of the Virgen de Pilar. La Pilar is the patron saint of Zaragoza, so its celebrations are reknowned for being bigger than in other parts of the country. Hence why we went there.
Me and Abby by the Cathedral de Pilar
We basically spent the afternoon on Friday and most of the day on Saturday wandering around Zaragoza, admiring its main plaza and gorgeous cathedral (I’ll try to post pictures when I can!), as well as enjoying the nightlife that the festival brought with it. However, the main day of the festival was actually the 12th, which was Sunday, and so we missed a lot of the big celebrations. The most important thing that they do there on the 12th is create a pyramid of flowers in the Plaza de Pilar. They spent all day on Saturday setting up the framework for it, and then Sunday many people brought flowers for the Virgen de Pilar, creating a really impressive looking structure. So, unfortunately, we missed seeing that, but that’s okay. The people were all still in a very festive mood and we enjoyed going out and being part of the nightlife.
Cathedral from across the river
Sunday found me back in Burgos for the day, relaxing after two days away. And the Monday morning I got up really early to spend the day in San Sebastian. San Sebastian is a coastal city in the Pais Vasco, about 3 hours away by bus, and it is absolutely stunning. I think some day I’ll have to go there and spend a significant amount of time. As in, live there or something. Spend my summer there. Whatever. I went there to visit a friend that I’d met a few weeks before in Logroño, and he and I spent the whole day just wandering around the city and eating. Nice, huh? It was a beautiful day, which for the Pais Vasco in this time of year is pretty unusual as it tends to rain there a lot. But we had some really yummy pintxos (the Basque word for tapas), for which the region is famous, and sat on the beach, enjoying the sun and watching the surfers. Interesting fact: they hold world-famous surfing competitions in San Sebastian. I had no idea. But it was a really lovely day, very relaxing and good practice for my Spanish!
Needless to say, I arrived home on Monday night absolutely muerta de cansancio (dead tired), but happy. Not such a bad way to spend the weekend!
