Saturday:
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| New cathedral of Salamanca |
For our school
trip to Salamanca, our bus left at 8:00 A.M. from the bus station,
which is a half hour walk away from our place, so I got up at 6 A.M.
The bus ride was about an hour and a half. Salamanca is in western
Spain, near Portugal. Ruth, my conversation class teacher, was our
guide this time.
We saw the Plaza
Mayor, lots and lots and lots of souvenir shops, two cathedrals, the
university, and a medieval bridge. Normally Spanish cities only have
one cathedral, but Salamanca has two. We went in the “new”
cathedral, but considering it was built between 1513 and 1733, it feels wrong to
call it new. During restorations on the cathedral in the 90s, an astronaut and a devil with an ice cream cone were added to the facade of the building to represent the 20th century (I have pictures). The inside of the cathedral
was huge and gorgeous. The university of Salamanca is the oldest university in
Spain. In the facade of the main building, there is a small skull
with a frog on its head. Supposedly, if you can find it on the
building you will have good luck. Also, because of this strange
image on an ancient building, the frog is the symbol of Salamanca.
All of the souvenir shops had different kinds of frogs that said
Salamanca on them.
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| The astronaut and the devil on the cathedral |
After we
finished our tour, we were given free time. All of us ate our packed
lunches in Plaza Mayor. I think some of the Spaniards were amused at
the large group of Americans (and French) kids sitting on the ground
eating sandwiches. Next we all kind of split up and went souvenir
shopping.
On our way back
to Valladolid I was actually awake and saw that most of the land
between Salamanca and Valladolid is fields of sunflowers. They were
very pretty and I didn't realize sunflowers were such a big crop
here.
We took a nap
and then went out for tapas with Alberto, his friend Lucía
(practicing her English), Jon, Zou, Clemens, Alex, and Emily. I
didn't try anything new (just had croquetas, which are still
delicious) but it was fun going out with the group.
Sunday:
 |
| Inside the new cathedral |
Today Jon,
Bailey, and I went to a little town called Iscar because Mercedes
said they would have a running of the bulls and “mucha fiesta.”
Unfortunately, the only return bus to Valladolid was at 5:00 P.M.,
but we still went anyway thinking there might be something going on
before that. We were very wrong. As seems to be the case in most
small towns, siesta is ghost town time. All the places were closed
and no one was around. We did hike up to the castle above town and
walked around the walls. We also looked at the plaza de toros and
played in a park. Apart from that, we spent the next couple hours
walking around and looking for a bathroom (which we did eventually
find, but it's really difficult when every place is closed). We took
the bus back to Valladolid, which was wild and nauseating; Spain has
some crazy drivers.
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| The skull (left one, looking down) with the frog |
Mercedes and
Reyes had gone out but left us supper. We had large salads and what
we thought we some kind of dessert potato until we realized they were
pears (except Monday she told us they were apples, oops). They might have been what you'd call “candied” but I'm
not really sure; they were good though. Bailey and I watched the
Olympics while eating supper. Spain beat China at basketball and we
also watched some gymnastics. We were very tired and went to bed at
9:00.
To see a lot more pictures of Salamanca, and some of Iscar, maybe not immediately but a couple hours after this post, go to: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3658125574575.2134912.1317690207&type=1&l=ab1113a4a3
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