Salamanca - La ciudad dorada

December 5 - 7, 2010-

 1)      Get up at 7AM to catch the bus at 8:30 – CHECK

 2)      Umbrella packed - CHECK

 3)      Walk to the bus station without forgetting the tickets – CHECK

 4)      Settle in for a 4 hour bus ride to Madrid, then another 2 hours to Salamanca – CHECK



Plaza Mayor, Salamanca

 As my trip to Salamanca was decided only a day before I left, it was kind of a last minute decision but one well worth it! So my morning was busy the day of my trip to Salamanca, but I didn’t mind seeing as I had packed the night before and just needed to prep some food and get myself rain-proofed… the rain nor the lengthy trip would keep me down! I arrived in Salamanca around 4:00PM and had remembered to write down the directions of how to get to the hostel there, so I had found the Revolutum Hostel around 4:30PM, which was located about 40 metres away from the famous Plaza Mayor and right in the midst of the tourist area. I was booked into a shared-room with 4 other girls, none of which were in the room when I arrived, but I was so impressed by the cleanliness of the room, and the fact that we had our own bathroom with a shower AND bathtub, bathmat included!
And the hostel has only one designated smoking area, down in the café, truly revolutionary compared to some of the hostel horror stories I’ve heard with regards to smells... After dropping off my bag in the room, I walked around the historic part of Salamanca until nightfall, taking pictures and just getting a feel for where I was and how to make my way back to the hostel – turns out I have a good sense of direction, but it also helped that the gothic cathedral can be seen from almost any point of the city so it was easy to find my way back.

Gothic spires of the Catedral

The following morning, Monday, I woke up early to go downstairs and have breakfast with two girls in my room – one from London and another from Cyprus who are both teaching English in Madrid – and then I started my true sight-seeing tour. Rain was predicted, but I was happy to see that it wasn’t raining but we had blue skies all day, though with some pretty strong winds messing up my hair- ugh! First stop was the Plaza Mayor in the morning, with the light reflecting off the characterstic ‘golden’ stones used in the construction of many buildings in Salamanca, hence why it’s known as the “Ciudad Dorada” (Golden City). I was soon bombarded by a tour guide who convinced me to join a tour starting at 11AM around the main attractions, such as the Old and New Cathedral, La Casa de las Conchas, La Universidad Salamanca, Pontifica etc.. all for 9 euros! After paying I waited in the plaza and soon our elaborately dressed and outspoken tour guide, dressed in a Russian fur hat and cape (don’t ask) began with an introduction to the plaza and toured us around the old quarter of Salamanca.

Casa del las Conchas (House of the Shells)

Admiring the view down a sidestreet

The Cathedral lit up at night, truly overwhelming!



Looking up in the Cathedral Nuevo



The altar in the Catedral Viejo

Today, one can hardly notice that there are in fact two cathedrals which share one wall. It’s a mixture of gothic, roman, and rococo styles all due to the time it took to build the Cathedral. The Catedral Vieja (old cathedral) was seen as too small to be a cathedral, and was added onto by Napoleon which is the main structure which is seen today. Framing the door the Catedral Nueva, there are a number of elaborate carvings, including one of a lynx and an astronaut, carved more recently which were seen as symbols of the support of new sciences and studies in Salamanca. Inside the Cathedral is one of the oldest organs in Europe, built in the XV Century.

Universidad de Salamanca-

The university was founded in the XV Century, where studies were originally conducted only be those in the holy order, who studied in the cathedral, sat on the cold stone floors, and without desks or chairs, would write on parchment on the backs of their fellow students. The actual free-standing university wasn’t constructed until the XVI Century where different rooms were dedicated to different studies such as law, medicine, linguistics and politics. A quote inscribed on an inner wall has stuck with me since and seems to encapsulate the spirit of university studies: “Edificar la razon, el historico y la tolerancia como instrumentos”, or in English: Use reason, history, and tolerance as tools. Something to live by, no?

After about 4.5 hours of the tour, we ended up back in the Plaza Mayor where I decided to take a break and while walking back to the hostel, bumped into my two hostel roommates and so after chatting until they had to leave to catch their bus, I returned back to Revolutum where I met Bernie. From Kilkenny, Ireland, with an incredible accent and an even more incredible capability to drink beer as if it were water.

 She and I spent our last evening tapa-hopping around Salamanca, having a drink at each place before finally giving in to splurging on sushi – neither of us have had sushi since being in Spain, and the 6 pieces of sushi were well worth the 14 euros! (YIKES). The next morning, Bernie and I said goodbye with a promise to meet again in Northern Spain and while she headed off to catch her bus, I meandered slowly to the bus station a few hours early, but took a detour and found the current Salamanca University – a HUGE campus with over 40,000 students attending! Of course, I had to take a peek inside the Social Sciences building… maybe I’ll be back one day, but maybe as a student?

Adio Salamanca!

Standing in the courtyard of Universidad de Salamanca - where the int'l students study.. hmmm

Salamanca University library - founded in the 1600's.

View of the old quarter from the Roman bridge in Salamanca

Catedral Santa Maria

Kodak moment in the Plaza Mayor

An American Thanksgiving... in Spain?

Novermber 26th, 2010 -

So in order to keep up tradition while away, the other American Language Assistants decided to host a Thanksgiving Dinner at the end of November on a Friday evening when we would all be available. We all did our portion of cooking to contribute to the feast… Luckily my roommates and I are not half-bad cooks and brought along a sweet potato casserole, some roasted potatoes with garlic and rosemary, and of course some carrots with basil (it’s a Texan thing, apparently). Thanks to Jessica’s friend Christopher – a guy who works at the local Mercado de absastos (indoor market where they sell fresh meat, veggies etc) – we didn’t have to ride the bus with our pots and winebottles in tow and made it directly to our destination in Don Benito… for FREE. Life is good, ain’t it?
Our hosts were Erica and Victoria who kindly allowed all 13 of us to use their kitchen as a prepping station at 5:00pm to reheat the food and open up a few bottles of wine, and Spanish beer of course. Considering none of us are “cooks” and we didn’t have access to some ingredients here in Spain, or even fresh/unprocessed turkey, we all somehow managed to not burn our pisos down and cook a meal consisting of: 2 green salads, 2 meatloafs, stuffing with apples and raisings (as cranberries are a thing of fairytales here), 2 roasted chickens, garlic/rosemary potatoes, sweet potato casserole, basil carrots, pumpkin pie (made from a real pumpkin), apple pie (made from scratch too), and roasted vegetables. How we managed to eat all that then still want to go out bowling afterwards is still astounding to me… We walked only 20 minutes to the area in Don Benito known as “Las Cumbres” which is a big “centro de ocio”/leisure-mall.. so basically it is filled with movie theatres, bars, kids playplaces, a small shopping area and a “bolera”/bowling alley consisting of – drum roll please – 6 lanes!

No, it wasn’t busy when we went on Friday night for a few reasons.

1)      We were there too early, 9:30pm is time for dinner and not for bowling.

2)      Bowling just isn’t popular here, unless there is drinking involved.

With regards to the second reason, there is a full bar and live-music stage in the “bowling alley” and they don’t rent shoes, so I and the other girls were stuck trying to bowl in high-heels. Go ahead and laugh, it was pretty funny to watch.

The day after, one of Jessica’s sponsor teachers invited us to his house for a small gathering on Saturday afternoon. Thinking it was nothing formal, I brought along some chocolates as a hosting gift and Jessica brought a bottle of wine – turns out this was a party celebrating his baby’s Baptism.. so we arrived a little unprepared with strange gifts that only a foreigner would bring to a baptism, but we had fun anyway. We spent the hours chatting in Spanish with his family and friends and tasted a jaw-dropping paella which was so large that it had to be carried in by 3 people!! A local man prepares these huge paellas for special events I’m told… so I’ll have to track him down and maybe teach me how to make one, as it was truly the best Spanish food I’ve had so far! That and jamon iberico and serrano. They invited us to stay longer than the 4 hours we were there, telling us that these types of parties usually continue for about 12 hours (from about 2pm until around 3am or so) once the “grandparents” get tired and go home, all the “young” ones continue drinking, eating, and head to bars. Wow, I think Spain can out-party the latinos anytime… guess it’s all in the genes!

Our lovely hosts Victoria (from England) and Erika (US)

The auxiliares familia! Happy Thanksgiving!

Roommates of Calle Donana 9 4D - myself, Jessica and Veronica

Disaster strikes when a chair is broken! But all is well as Tom comes to the rescue...

Then on Sunday – just two days after digesting Thanksgiving – I took a much-needed walk out past Villanueva on a “nature trail” that basically is a dirt road past the garbage/scrap-metal dump first, then onto the countryside between the “quintas”/countryhouses and olive groves, I returned after only 10km, though this route apparently goes for 50km connecting with another small town. Next time I’m renting a mule.