Salamanca!

Last week, my Wednesday class got canceled and since Elise doesn't have classes on Wednesdays, we decided to take a day trip to a city near Madrid. So far, our group has done really well with traveling around Madrid and seeing some of the fun sights within an hour or two of the city, so this time we went a bit further and took a train 2.5 hours to the city of Salamanca.

We caught the train from Madrid at about 8:45 am and slept most of the way to Salamanca. When we got there, the temperature had dropped to the high 50's (fahrenheit) and it was pouring down rain. Elise and I looked at each other thinking the same thing - "Seriously? So this is the day we're going to have?" We huddled under an awning for about 25 minutes as the storm passed. Though it was terrible timing, we both enjoy a good thunderstorm and hard rain...still, we were none too thrilled to have this happen in our first few minutes in a really fun city. Finally, the storm passed and it looked like our day would be fine to continue our tour.

Salamanca is in western Spain and is best known for its University (rivaling the quality of Oxford and Cambridge...it is where Cervantes studied), its Plaza Mayor (city square), an ancient Roman bridge (that looks like new), and a giant, gorgeous Cathedral (split into Old and New). Sadly, after seeing several Spanish cities (particularly Madrid), the Plaza Mayor was really nice, but nothing too extraordinary so we flew through it pretty quickly. We were both hungry so we stopped for a gofre...one of the best creations known to mankind (or at least to this man). It is a waffle covered in ice cream and chocolate sauce (we got white chocolate sauce)....quite a treat. With our new energy, we soldiered on and saw the Cathedral. It is easily one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen. If you ever see Elise, ask her and her answer will be that at first, my jaw dropped, but then I just started rambling for about 10 minutes about how I've seen good churches, but that was the best. It's columns, bold and strong, climbed toward heaven and flowed into each other to produce gorgeous arches and some of the best ceilings I've seen. Great place...and the rainy day made it better.

From there, we walked to the University and peeked inside one of its older buildings. It is fun to compare it to Duke...our dorms are named after former university presidents (Few, Keohane) and they had one dorm named after Cervantes (no big deal, just the writer of Don Quixote and the most important Spanish writer ever). Then, we walked down to the river (finally an impressive river! Most in Spain are little dried up creeks.) and over to the ancient Roman bridge. Another great thing to see...lunch came next (typically good Spanish lunch), a little bit more walking around, and then we caught a 7 pm train back to Madrid. All in a day's work!