This past week has been filled with a lot of traveling and it’s been really exciting to visit other cities in Spain and compare them to Burgos. On Friday, our program took a day trip to Bilbao and then to San Sebastian. Bilbao was a quick stop and we only stayed long enough to take a tour of the Guggenheim, which was innovative, inspiring, and thought provoking. I will be painting the outside of the museum for my final project in the course. San Sebastian was only a slightly longer stay, but it was absolutely beautiful.
Although we spent our entire four hour stay in San Sebastian on the beach, we did not miss out on the fashion. Like many beaches in Europe, San Sebastian is topless and nude friendly, and many of the ladies on the beach were flaunting their varied wares. Only a small percentage of the females on the sand were full on naked, but it was quite the trend to openly sun your ta-tas. The Spanish, so ready to be exposed to the sun, also worship a deep golden skin tone and there were many bronzed beauties strutting up and down the shore.
The bathing suit styles and prints were not entirely different from those in America, the main difference was the type of woman in each suit. A great deal of the younger women sported creatively shaped one-pieces, while many of the stereotypically more conservative older women were out and about in anything but modest bikinis. The forty plus crowd were proudly sporting everything from classy black two-pieces to brightly printed bikinis. The men, of course, proudly sported their speedos, with the shier ones donning shrunken trunks.
Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, we travelled stayed in Salamanca. Salamanca is proud to host both the private and the public University of Salamanca, and therefore an inevitably large population of college students. These students, similar to students in America, were keen on repping their school during the day with “University of Salamanca” shirts and sweaters and strutting out to the bars in dresses and wedges at night. In contrast to Burgos, the locals of Salamanca don’t seem to uphold the highest standard of dress, and many more locals could be spotted in ripped clothes and grunge-esque ensembles.
I enjoyed sampling the fashion pallets of some of Spain’s other cities, but I enjoyed returning home to my nook in Burgos where I can count on classy ladies and men in leather loafers. Next week, I’m off to Madrid!