Posted by Chris Showers on August 23rd, 2009.
 The cloister of the monastery. I just got back from visiting the Monasterio de Santo Domingo de Silos and thought I would share a little information with you about the monastery and the monks that live inside it.
The monastery is located about 45 minutes outside the city of Burgos in a quaint little village known as “Santo Domingo de Silos.” It’s home to a group of Benedictine monks. Certain parts of the monastery are open to the public and visitors can pay three Euros to have a guided tour. On the tour you will see things like the beautifully landscaped cloister of the monastery and some very interesting (and very old) religious sculptures and carvings which line the walls of the complex. Continue reading this post…
Posted by Chris Showers on August 20th, 2009.
 I never tire of walking past the Cathedral of Burgos on a sunny day. Here in Burgos, we are lucky enough to have a Gothic-style cathedral known as the “Cathedral of Burgos” (unique name, right?). Construction on the cathedral began way back in the year 1221 and the marvelous building has been standing ever since then. As far as Spanish cathedrals go, this one is actually a bit on the famous side and, during the summer months, tourists flock to see it.
You know, I have been living in Burgos for about a year now, have walked past this cathedral hundreds of times, and have made numerous visits to see its interior. Still, I can’t help but stop and admire it every time I walk by. When I think of the age of the building and the fact that its ornate artwork had to have been done by hand, I simply can’t help but be impressed — and believe me, the building is impressive both inside and out. I guess having it here is just another “perk” of living in Burgos.
For those of you who are interested, you can visit the interior of the cathedral any day of the week (the times vary by season). If you’re going to be in Burgos either the second or fourth Sunday of the month, you can enter the cathedral for free after 4:00 PM; otherwise, entrance costs four or five Euros. The visit includes seeing the actual cathedral itself and a walk through a small museum that explains how the building was originally built and later restored. Continue reading this post…
Posted by Chris Showers on August 4th, 2009.
 Bicibur bikes in their docking station, just waiting for someone to take them for a ride! Here’s a pretty cool idea that the Spanish Government came up with to both cut back on car pollution and keep people healthy at the same time: bicycle renting. Basically, bike “docking stations” like the one pictured above are starting to crop up all over Spanish cities. The idea is that a user can go to a docking station, swipe his ID card, and take a city-owned bike out for a ride. When the user is done with the bike, he can return it to any docking station in the city, eliminating the need to use a car to get from point A to point B.
Burgos recently implemented one of these systems (under the name “Bicibur”) and I think it’s actually a pretty ingenious idea. The cost of renting the bikes is really low — about two Euros for an ID card that unlocks the bikes and can be used for life – and the bike docking stations are pretty well-located within the city to allow users to pick up a bike at one location, drive it to their destination, and just leave it there without necessarily having to return it to its original location. In short, I’m pretty impressed with the program.
Still, I do see one small problem, at least in Burgos. Here, the bikes are really old and a tad on the crappy side. They generally work to get you from one side of the city to the other, but they don’t seem to be very well maintained. I suppose it’s too early to tell if the city is going to let the bikes deteriorate even more or step up and make repairs.
Another slight problem with this system is that I don’t usually see too many people using it (at least not here in Burgos). That leads me to something that we can debate in this post’s comments: if your city had a program like this one, would you use it? Why or why not? Continue reading this post…
Posted by Chris Showers on August 1st, 2009.
 The Burgos tourist train chugging along. I don’t know if this is exactly what Quad City DJs had in mind when they created the song “C’mon Ride the Train” back in the mid-1990s. It’s the Burgos “choo choo” tourist train and, for a small fee, it will take you to the most important monuments in the city of Burgos for your sightseeing pleasure.
I still remember the first time I saw this unique creation creeping along the streets of Burgos at a whopping 5 miles per hour. I was just walking along the sidewalk — minding my own business — when I suddenly looked up and my eyes laid upon it for the first time, a thing of beauty: the choo choo train. You know, it’s not every day that you see a motorized, wheeled train chugging down the street, obeying traffic rules, and generally running without a train track; thus, my first reaction was to chuckle a little. After the initial chuckle, I looked inside the train and saw all the tourists — cameras in hand – comfortably seated in the “passenger compartment” and I chuckled a bit more.
Obviously, after seeing the tourist train, I just had to ride it. A few days after the initial “sighting,” I got together a group of my friends and we had at it. The ride lasted about 45 minutes and it passed by all the most historic places in Burgos. The train came complete with an overhead loudspeaker which explained all aspects of the ride to the passengers: where the train was headed, what we were currently passing, etc. To my surprise, the ride wasn’t that bad. Of course, I don’t know if I’d rely on the Burgos tourist train to get me to Madrid (I suppose Renfe is better for that), but I guess it isn’t bad if you’re a tourist who wants to see the most important parts of the city. Continue reading this post…
Posted by Chris Showers on July 29th, 2009.
 A garbage can brims over as the Burgos Festivals come to an end. My regular readers know that, over the last couple weeks, I have been writing a mini-series on the 2009 Burgos Festivals – the biggest party of the year in the city of Burgos. To finish up the mini-series, I thought it would be appropriate to write this post about the tons of garbage that were produced (and needed to be cleaned up) as a result of the massive partying during festival week.
For those of you who have never been to Spain before, let me tell you that Spaniards are known to party hard until the wee hours of the night and all this partying can sometimes leave behind “trace evidence” in the form of empty food containers, bottles, etc. Judging from the amount of garbage in the container pictured above, the recent festival week in Burgos was no exception to the general “party all night long” rule. Still, despite all the partying, we have to give the Spaniards credit for always cleaning up their mess afterwards. Just take a look at the picture below to see what I mean. Continue reading this post…
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