Monday, March 22, 2010

Seeing Salamanca :)

Friday-March 19-This past weekend Chrissy and I visited Salamanca which is 5 hours from Bilbao, and northwest of Madrid. Once we got to the city we were able to find our hostel fairly easy-we didn't have a map so we were going off of what we remembered and the street our hostel was on. But there were a lot of friendly people there to help us out. Our hostel itself was absolutely terrible. We knew it'd be bad, but it was the cheapest out of the ones left available for the weekend-Salamanca is pretty popular to be at on Saturday nights especially. Anyhow the hostel was dirty and not fun, but we luckily didn't have to spend a lot of time there because we had great weather (it was supposed to downpour all weekend).
One of the first places we headed to was Plaza Mayor (photo below)-one of the, if not thee, most beautiful plazas in Spain. It is large, beautiful and full of life. People just sit on the ground within the plaza enjoying the weather (for some reason there aren't many benches within it), meeting up with family or talking with friends. Around the plaza are restaurants and bars.

We then headed to Museo y Iglesia de San Esteban (photo below from inside). The outside was beautiful but some of the inside parts were a bit creepy. One room had a dark room that was full of in ground tombs (more then normal) with music to go along with it... And then some of the porcelain pieces were sort of strange.

The main tourist center is called, Casa de las Conchas, meaning House of Shells and has shells decorating the outside walls. Across from it is Universidad Pontifcia. After we got our map from the information center it looked like it was about to downpour so we headed back to the hostel and ate lunch. Surprisingly it didn't rain until Saturday night after we were done sight-seeing for the day.

Night came quick since our bus hadn't gotten into Salamanca until about 3, so we spent the night finding the top places on the map so that on Saturday we could easily find them and take day pictures and tour, etc. We found the main University(photo above). The main wall is decorated and detailed like a cathedral, but the catch is that when you walk by it, everyone (literally) is pointing to the right side of this decorated entrance and saying rana. Rana means frog, and if you find the frog on this giant detailed entrance way-you'll have good luck on your studies. Unfortunately we needed help finding it, because at first we weren't sure what we were trying to find. Then someone told us exactly where to look, in the middle and to the right there was a small skeleton, on top of it was a tiny blurb that was indeed a frog (if you use your camera and zoom in and take a picture you will realize it isn't just a blob lol) (photo below). The obsession with frog souvenirs in all the shops is crazy, and since frogs are my favorite animal I thought it was cool. But by the end I was even frogged-out. We then found the Cathedral which was massive. And then we found the Roman bridge on the outskirts of the city.

Saturday-March 20-The first thing we did was head to Plaza Mayor which was a central point to see the things beyond it. Our first stop was to the Cathedral (Nueva-New) (photo below), and after taking pictures of the outside we went in. It was pretty inside but not as much as the one in Toledo. It was interesting because they were working on different small rooms that surround the outer edge of the cathedral. We realized people were walking around the top of the cathedral so we found where the door to go up was and paid a student price to go through. This actually led us to the old cathedral and it looked like they were preparing for a wedding with white flowers on the ends of the benches and a red carpet down the center. There were a lot more tombs in the ground to the right side of the center of the cathedral and then about 4 extravagant tombs along a side wall that led to more of the Old Cathedral. We decided to go to the towers, which had appeared to be included in the first ticket we bought but wasn't. It was definitely worth it though. We went up a winding staircase and one part led us to a room with a book of Aristotle's and other important works. We kept walking and were able to walk out on 2 different parts- one was like a platform-and be level with the tops of the towers-it was incredible. We then got to walk along the top of the New Cathedral.

We then went and saw things that were close to Plaza Mayor that we had previously seen but didn't know the names of including: the Torre (Tower) de Clavero, Palacio de La Salina de Fonseca and Palacio de Orellana. The Palacio's weren't anything too fantastic, mostly just plain buildings, so we head back to Plaza Mayor.
After lunch we headed to the Cathedral again in search of an astronaut that was supposed to be on the wall. We couldn't find it so we thought it was a scam on the web given the time the Cathedral was built-but when we went into the souvenir shops we realized there was an astronaut somewhere on the wall. When we still couldn't find it, we headed to the University and toured it. The rooms were pretty basic, but there was a library we could see from the glass enclosed door, that was really cool to see. There were a ton of books on all of the walls, and a couple old-fashioned globes. To imagine the room, picture Beauty and the Beast and the library in there. :) In the corner of the hallway there were 2 faded paintings of Saints that were done to discourage students way back in the day not to pee in the corner when studying in the library in days of no heat or glass.
After the University we went into the Official Souvenir Shop of the University. It was pretty expensive, nice things that weren't really touristy. We also toured the Convento de Las Duenos. There was a large plaza inside of it and you could go up stairs that let you look down on it.
We then found the astronaut-finally!-on the Cathedral-we had been on the wrong side of it. Both sides were extravagant. Very strange of the cathedral to have an astronaut on it, and it was worn from the years and looked sort of like an alien.

And one side-note-The Universities here look like Cathedrals, all old-fashioned buildings. All beautiful.
(View from the Roman Bridge on our first night in the city :))

Sunday March 21-Today we returned back to the entrance of the main University. Across from it and to the left is a plaza-in which there are rooms off of it. One particular one has a large painting in it. The background was faded blue and had gold stars on all of it. With different figures/animals painted on it. It was very large and the room was dark with only some light shining well enough to see the painting.
We then head to see Casa Lis Museo Art Deco y Art Nouveau. The back of this museum that faced the river was completely stained glass. We had to check out of our hostel by noon so we headed back and got our stuff, then relaxed in Plaza Mayor until it was time to leave for our bus to Bilbao.
Another successful weekend :)
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March 24th- Wednesday we begin our spring break. It's been a lot of work planning it, and it has come so fast. The places we're going: Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin, Krakow, Prague, Vienna, and then Zurich and Geneva in Switzerland and back to Bilbao. :) :) :) I'm going to do my best with pictures and blogs either during or after break :) If things get to crazy/busy with our touring probably after :)

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