Posted by Chris Showers on July 7th, 2009.
 French performers ride an ostrich and a large ball down the street at the Burgos Festivals. All last week, the city of Burgos was in “festival mode.” You see, last week was the famous “San Pedro y San Pablo” week in Burgos, the week in which the entire city is turned upside down by non-stop partying. I spent the week taking pictures of the festivities and have decided to create a mini-series here on the blog to document all that happened. This is the first installment of said mini-series with much more to come over the upcoming days.
In this installment of the mini-series, I’d like to talk about something of utmost importance to the festivals: street performers. It seemed to me that no matter where I went in the city last week, I somehow came in contact with a street performer ”out and about.” Most of these performers wandered aimlessly throughout the city; however, some were assigned to particular streets. In any event, the thing that surprised me most about these performers was the quality of their performances; in fact, it was obvious that these people were highly trained and had years of practice and thus their shows were nothing short of amazing — this wasn’t a homeless guy strumming a banjo on the street to earn a dime. Continue reading this post…
Posted by Chris Showers on June 18th, 2009.
 Some young musicians perform during Youth Music Week in Burgos. That’s right, this week was the “Caja Círculo” sponsored “Youth Music Week” here in Burgos. That means that all week long “Caja Círculo” stages were being put up and taken down around the city and various young artists were scheduled to perform on them. It was really an interesting sight — as I was walking through various sections of the city, I got to be “serenaded” by the many young musicians. Of course, some of their music was a little too “heavy” for my taste (by “heavy” I mean head banging, screaming at the top of your lungs noise)… but that’s ok.
This is one thing that I like about Spain: there’s always a cultural “something” to do and usually that “something” is free or low-cost. Of course, in this case, head banging teens screaming lyrics at the top of their lungs wasn’t really my “cup of tea,” but still, it’s cool that this event was held in the city. Continue reading this post…
Posted by Chris Showers on June 6th, 2009.
 A diver emerges from the water after exploration of the Pozo Azul in Covanera. On my recent excursion to the Cañón del Ebro, one of the stops that I made was in the village of Covanera, located just outside of the city of Burgos, at a place called the Pozo Azul. Basically, the Pozo Azul is a bluish colored karst spring that has a submerged cave underneath it. Indeed, the cave below the surface of the water is said to be the longest submerged cave in all of Spain.
The Pozo Azul is quite famous in Spain amongst cave divers and, to my surprise, a diver ”appeared” from the blue depths after I had been at the location for about five minutes or so and I was able to snap a picture as he made his way out of the water. Once he got out, he told me and my travel companions that several of his fellow divers were still beneath the surface wrapping up their exploration mission and that diving in this location is not uncommon. He also explained a little bit about this history of the area and said that the bluish color is due to the way the sun reflects off the surface of the water and the rocks.
I thought it was really cool to actually be able to see and talk with one of the cave divers who frequent the area and learn a little more about the history of this karst spring. It’s also pretty interesting to think that they began exploring the cave in 1964 and still to this day there are unexplored areas. I would definitely recommend a trip to Covanera if you’re ever in the Burgos area. Continue reading this post…
Posted by Chris Showers on June 2nd, 2009.
 Here I am at a lookout point over the canyon. You can see the Ebro River behind me... I'm squinting from the sun, but that's ok. I wanted to share with everyone some pictures and stories from a recent trip that I took to the Ebro River Canyon located near Burgos. I took the trip with some other teachers from the school where I work and, honestly, before going I wasn’t really expecting a lot. You see, before we went, the other teachers told me that this would very much be a “rural” trip — we would be visiting small “pueblos” in the countryside and walking along rural routes. Since I consider myself a “city boy,” I wasn’t sure if I was going to like this trip very much… but I went anyway.
After going on the trip, I have to say that I was quite impressed. The villages that we visited were all very pretty, the landscape was very green (I didn’t even know things got that green here in Castilla y León), and I had the opportunity to see something that is a little less “touristy” and a little more “Spanishy,” if you know what I mean. Plus, it was nice to leave the city behind for an afternoon and get a breath of fresh, country air.
Really, I think the pictures from this trip speak for themselves. Below, I’ll leave a few more pictures for you to take a look at. If you still want to see more, you can check out my “Pueblos of Burgos” album on Picasa. Continue reading this post…
Posted by Chris Showers on May 10th, 2009.
 Ice cream stands like this one have been popping up all over the city of Burgos recently. Just within the last week or two, lots of odd-looking, brown booths like the one pictured above have mysteriously appeared around the city of Burgos. At first, I wasn’t really sure what these little booths were for since they were all closed and locked up very tightly. Later, however, when the weather began to break here, these strange little buildings that resemble tool sheds began to open their “hatches” and I soon realized that they were ice cream booths designed to keep passersby cool on those hot, summer Burgos days.
I think it’s a cool (literally “cool”) idea to have ice cream booths strategically placed around the city. I guess, in a way, these booths are the Spanish version of the familiar “ice cream truck man” that I grew up with in the States. Speaking of the ice cream truck man, does anybody know if there are ice cream trucks in Spain? Personally, I’ve never seen one here… I guess the booth is as close as they get to the whole “mobile frozen treats” thing.
Here’s something fun for this post. Would everyone who reads this post please write a short comment below telling me what your favorite ice cream flavor is? Continue reading this post…
Posted by Chris Showers on April 13th, 2009.
 A child plays in a fountain as her parents enjoy the sun at an outdoor café. Anybody familiar with Spain knows that Burgos, the city in which I live, is quite famous for being a cold and sometimes snowy place in the winter. I guess that explains why as soon as spring arrives, people here take full advantage of it. As you can see in the above photo, lately we’ve had some nice weather here and the outdoor cafés (along with “street life” in general) have really been booming.
This is something I love about Spain. In most American cities, you don’t see very many people out taking a leisurely stroll or spending half an afternoon at a café soaking up the sunlight. It’s like we’re always running from one place to the next and we don’t take time to “stop and smell the roses,” so to speak. Continue reading this post…
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