So after last weekend's lazy weekend I was determined to make this weekend more adventurous. Wednesday was St. Patrick's Day and I couldn't go out because I had a grammar test on Thursday, but Thursday night there was an Erasmus St. Patrick's Day themed party. A lot of people were wearing green and the Irish international students were loving it. One guy even had his entire face painted with the colors of the Irish flag. Kate, Nina and I tried to go look for some Irish accessories before the fiesta, but we failed in doing so and only walked away with green beaded necklaces that had tiny mugs hanging from them. The party was just like any other Erasmus party and nothing like an American Saint Patrick's Day party, but at least I got to celebrate!
In my Basque Culture class my professor told us about a festival for
EL Dia de San Jose, Spain's father's day.The festival was in Bakio, a northern coastal town in Pais Vasco. The town is known for their txakoli (white wine) and basically the festival celebrated this. It sounded like a lot of fun so I convinced Kate and Nina to come with me and we took a bus early the next morning. There weren't too many people there when we first showed up, but there were dozens of cows and horses tied to posts that everyone was mingling around! We took the oppurtunity to get some pictures with these guys... Kate even pet one! And then we went to go find some food. I saw a stand making
Talo (just like a Mexican tortilla but a bit thicker and made with corn flour and water). People were stadning around eating it with lomo (pork) and chorizo (smoked sausage). We decided to give it a try and got some glasses of txakoli as well.It defintiely hit the spot... The txakoli was a tad more sour than the one I tired on my pintxos trip though.
We walked around some more, got some free stickers, balloons and sheep masks (all for little kids of course) and heard some traditional Basque music. Then i thought it would be a good idea to go find the beach. We finally got around to asking someone and found out it was only a ten minute walk. I'm really glad we made the walk because the beach was beautiful! It was just too bad that there wasn't any sun... The beach was known for its waves so there were tons of surfers out in the water. It was really low tide too so we walked around a little bit and I even found a ton of seaglass (all green, probably from all those wine bottles!) We started to wait for the bus after that and then realized it wouldn't be coming for another hour and half... So we went back to the festival and got some chocolate this time. I got white chocolate with pistachios... Sounds kind of iffy, but it was delcious!
The next day Kate decided to go meet up with her Tandem partner Olga in her hometwon Castro again, so I was roommate less for the day/night. Nina and I were still determined to go on another adventure so we decided to take a bus to the capital of the Basque Country, Vitoria. I had a friend who went a few weeks ago so she told me we could get a map at the bus station that would leade us to the Old Quarter and we could see all kinds of churches and monuments and what not. Nina and I accidentally got our tickets to leave Vitoria at 8:15pm so we got that time changed once we arrived and then we headed out! Vitoria was a lot bigger than I expected, but we didn't have much trouble finding the historical part of town. We headed to a church called La Catedral de Santa Maria first. It is a gothic church that is currently going under renovation. We opted to skip a Spanish speaking tour and just go check it out on our own for 2euro. The entrance fee didn't get us much of anywhere besides the main hall of the church that was covered in stone dust, but we did get to wear some pretty cool construction helmets!
After that church and some more walking around (Nina and I found postcards to add to our collection... made the trip worth while!) we found cheap place to eat lunch. With a Menu del Dia that consisted of Paella and Steak. We got nervous at first because we sat by a table with a bunch of crying babies, but the parents were sensible enough to take them outside. We were lucky though, we got the last able in the place and other had to wait for over an hour. After lunch Nina and I spotted a gelato store. If you have never tried gelato, do it! I can't wait to have it practically every day in Italy! I got Kinder flavored. Kinder is a delicious brand of chocolate over here, so obviously my ice cream was fantastic. Siesta kind of got in the way of things after lunch because the churches and places we wanted to get into were closed, but we just walked around and talked for a bit and it was good to just be out of the dorm. After wasting a little more time in some stores Nina, my aching feet and I were ready to go. That night we went out to some local Irish bars with our friends Tony and Matt and of course I added one (or two) more beer glasses to my collection!
A cathedral off in the distance in Vitoria
It was a quieter weekend with a lot of people off doing their own weekend trips, but I enjoyed my trips. And I got to spend Sunday catching up on homework and such (yes I have homework here!) Now I am in the beginning preparations for Spring Break!! We leave on Wednesday so I have plenty to do. So I guess that will be my next entry, but until then hasta luego!
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