St. Ignatius Celebration

Outside of the Basque country in Spain, Boise has the second largest population of Basque people in the world. This weekend is the Basque Festival, a celebration of St. Ignatius. Yesterday we went down to the Basque block (an area of Basque restaurants, center, museum, market and pub) to see some of the activities. We saw some Basque dancers that were from Spain and the local group had raised money to bring them here specifically for this event.

It was over 100 degrees yesterday and they had on the traditional costumes which meant that at one point the women had on wool leg warmers and knickers under several layers of skirts. I felt sorry for them in such heat, but they did well. Here are some pictures.