Salamanca

I had a wonderful time in Salamanca this weekend and I am so glad I went! It was a long trip for a short amount of time actually spent in the city, but it was completely worth it.

Salamanca is home of the oldest university in Spain, and it is definitely a college town. It is much smaller than Sevilla, and reminds me a little of Chapel Hill. The University of Salamanca was established in 1230. It's where Columbus came to get travel advice, and also where my señora, Inés, went to college! She gave us lots of tips on what to see and showed us a virtual tour before we went. Besides its rich history and historic sites, Salamanca is known for its cheap, delicious tapas and its nightlife (college town!)

Friday we left after class, around 2:00 in the afternoon. It was a long 7-hour bus ride, but I sat next to Alice for the first half and the second half next to a guy from a small town near Salamanca who sells cars. So I talked to him for awhile-- yay for speaking with natives and improving my language skills! Even though my Spanish was obviously very broken, he said he understood me just fine. It made me feel accomplished that now I can actually (somewhat) communicate with natives!

We finally got to Salamanca around 9:30 at night, and everyone was exhausted and hungry. We got to the hostel and checked in, then went to a pizza place.



We didn't do anything else that night because we were all so tired. We got back to the hostel around midnight and went to bed. This was my first experience in a hostel, and I can't say that I particularly liked it. There were 20 people crammed onto 10 bunkbeds in our room, and people came in, turned on the lights, tripped over things, had loud conversations, snored and kicked the beds all through the night. I hardly slept at all.

Regardless, I woke up at 8 a.m. the next morning to begin touring the city. This was about the same time that some people in our hostel were just getting back, but since we only had a weekend we knew we'd be rushing to get everything done. We were out by 9 and went to a charming little pub that had a breakfast special-- a croissant or piece of bread with butter and jelly, hot cocoa or coffee, and an orange juice for around 2 euros.

The charming breakfast spot looked like a library

Mmm... I love croissants and hot cocoa

After breakfast our group split off-- I went with Cherise and Audra and the SAS girls went off by themselves. We decided to follow Rick Steves all the way, and started with the second-most-obvious tourist destination of the city-- the cathedral. Salamanca's main cathedrals are called the "old" and "new" cathedrals, and you have to go through the new to get to the old.

The "New" Cathedral, built 1513- 1733

This is the Capilla de Santa Barbara, a the room off of the Old Cathedral. According to Rick Steves, "you can sit like students did for their tests" (so I did). "During these final exams, a stern circle of professors formed around the student at the tomb of the Salamanca bishop, who founded the University of Salamanca around 1230. The university originated with a group of teacher-priests who met in this room."

After visiting the old and new cathedrals, we paid again to climb the tower. We got a beautiful view over the city and of the upper floors and terraces of both cathedrals.

From the terrace, the New Cathedral reminded me of the National Cathedral in Washington D.C.!

The towers of the old and new cathedrals

View of the ciudad

After our visit to the cathedrals, we went to the main tourist attraction of Salamanca-- the University. Founded in 1230, the University was one of Europe's leading centers of learning for 400 years.

The oldest library in Spain-- wow!

You can't see it that well, but this is the Hall of Fray Luis de León. According to Rick: "The narrow wooden-beam tables and benches-- whittled down by centuries of studious doodling-- are originals. Professors spoke from the Church-threatening cátedra, or pulpit. It was here that free-thinking brother Luis de León returned, after the Inquisition jailed and tortured him for five years for challenging the Church's control of the word of God by translating part of the Bible into Castilian. He started his first post-imprisonment lecture with, "As we were saying..." Such courageous men of truth believed the forces of the Inquisition were not even worth acknowledging."

Courtyard of the university

The doors of the university are ornately decorated, and it's good luck for students to find a tiny frog on a skull buried within the facade. You should have heard our señora trying to explain this tradition to us at dinner the night before we left-- especially since we didn't know the words for frog or skull. So funny, we had no idea what she was talking about.

Big group of people searching for the frog on the skull.

We found it! Good luck for us!

I am going to go ahead and post this... but look for a second Salamanca post to come!