Advertisement
Published: September 10th 2006
Edit Blog Post
jamon!!!
nothing like a giant spanish ham walking around so yesterday was our little excursion to salamanca, about two and a half hours west of madrid...
our language institute place provided a bus for us, but that meant if you weren't going to return at 4:30 that afternoon, you'd have to pay your own way back the next day. our plan was to stay the night, so that was kind of a bummer, but some of us did eventually decide to stay.
the city itself was quite nice, and the university of salamanca is the oldest in all of europe. its a student city, like boston, so the night life and such during the school year is really fun and reasonably cheap. we spent the day getting a tour of the city, almost all of which is built in this orangey sandstone-type material. apparently every few years they have to refurbish the facades of the cathedrals and whatnot because of how easily it wears away from bird shit, snow, rain, etc.
the university itself was beautiful and we learned a lot about its history and things like how to tell the wealth and position of the people buried there based upon the number of pillows that were
Plaza
the central plaza carved and things like that. cool beans.
4:30 come around and it started to drizzle. nonetheless 7 out of the 20 decided to stay. me, casey, and nick decided that we didn't feel like spending money on a hostel and would therefore party through the night until catching a bus early in the morning. before the nightlife picked up we went to a civil war archive exhibit as well as sat at a cafe watching bullfighting on tv.
we did some grocery shopping (vodka and fanta, so as to save money on drinks) and then started hitting the tapas/pincho stands. for 1.50 euro you got a beer, wine, or other beverage plus a pincho, which was awesome. we spent probably two hours just hopping from stand to stand eating paella, pulp, lomo, etc. etc. delicious.
at around 11 started the big fireworks show which was really good, surprisingly. thanks for the idea, china! then the clubbing began, hopping from place to place, taking shot after shot, etc. etc. we ran into the other 4 bc kids for a while but we weren't too keen on staying with them, so we continued to do our own thing, getting
god knows what during our 3 visits to this one fast food place open til 6
once 6am rolled around we headed to the bus station, a bit of a walk away. the next bus was at 8am, which sucked, so we literally collapsed on the floor and slept for half an hour before some worker sent us to a bench. we bought our tickets and hopped on the bus at 8, making it safely back to madrid.
life is ridiculous here in spain. that's about it. at the end of the month i might be making an excursion to the north to san sebastian and bilbao, so expect an update at some point.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.059s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 25; dbt: 0.0406s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Theresa
non-member comment
copas...!?! jiji
mi madre esta preocupada...piensa que bebes demasiado.... y estoy de acuerdo. cheers! haha, hasta pronto!