Salamanca... ¿capillas?

This past Friday/Saturday, my program took an overnight trip to Salamanca, home of the oldest university in Spain. (Naturally, I bought a souvenir T-shirt.) I'm sure it has lots of other significance, but my tour guide only really projected to the 4 people standing closest to him (and it was creepy to have him give a tour only directly to you when you did stand up front), so I'm afraid some of the culture and history was lost. Nevertheless.

We arrived on Friday after a nearly 3 hour bus ride and checked into our very nice hotel. After that we did lots of tours around Salamanca, strolling around the historic district. We first visited a large cathedral, which was amazingly vaulted and tall. Although I've seen a lot of cathedrals in Europe, this one seemed especially ornate, with lots of the molding painted in bright colors. And it was so tall! We went up into the balconies and it still seemed to be really high-ceilinged even though we were already about 3 stories up. We also toured around the edges looking at the artwork adoring each of the small capillas, or chapels. Some of them were very strange, with portraits of a crucified Jesus with his feet resting almost on the ground, which was covered in bones and skulls. We then went up into the Jeronimo Tower, which gave a beautiful view of the entire city. (I forgot my camera, but hopefully I'll be able to steal some pictures from my friend.) It was so cool to be up on the rooftops (although I found that I really, really, truly hate stone spiral staircases). The moldings on the outside of the cathedral were also really interesting. Apparently they were renovated several years ago, and there is now a tiny astronaut hidden among the rest of the more traditional molding. Another interesting site was a building completely covered in conch shell moldings. There is also a very large obsession with frogs, due to the fact that one is hidden in the facade of another important building. (They're very in to hiding random objects in fine art, it seems). Last we visited Casa Lis, a museum filled with late 19th-20th century objects - art nouveau and art deco collected by a native Salamancan patron, with a passion it seems, for figurines. The museum also included an expansive collection of wide-eyed porcelain dolls. (Creepy).

After the touring we were given some free time. I went out to lunch with several friends, followed by the largest Ben & Jerry's sundaes I've ever seen. To kill time between the tour end (6p) and dinner at 9:15, we all went back to the hotel to rest. (It was really cold to be walking around the streets once the sun went down). It was really nice to be able to all gather in one place since when we leave school we either have to go to a specific place in order to socialize, or just go home, which is very isolating. It was nice to not be out at a cafe and just have free time with friends. And laugh. A lot.

We had a delicious dinner at the hotel followed by a tasting of the Salamancan night life. Although not quite the craziness of Madrid, we still had lots of fun. We ended up meeting up with some French and Italian girls who were studying abroad in Salamanca and they showed us all the best bars (in their opinion). We went to a crowded local bar where I sampled the Spanish drink "Agua de Valencia", which is a combination of sparkling wine, vodka, and orange Fanta. (I found out the ingredients post-consumption, which I think was a good thing considering that sounds like the most unappetizing cocktail ever. But it was really good!) We then went to a bar that serves only chupitas (shots), most of which have wild names. My favorite was one with honey and rum.

Saturday, we toured the historic part of the University, although I must say I got bored of looking at room after room of classrooms that look like chapels. Some of them had cool murals on the ceilings though. We had more time to explore, and my group of friends decided to go for Chinese food (yes, I know, authentic of us). The food, however, was not very authentic, although the women running it were actually Chinese...? We arrived home, extremely, tired on Saturday, and I stayed in the rest of the weekend because I was getting a cold. (And then we happened to learn words relating to colds/sickness in Spanish on Monday!) But I'm better now, and very psyched for my upcoming trip to Strasbourg to visit Anna. (And very relieved that the Lufthansa strike didn't seem to affect my flight plans!).

Also... I'm currently uploading pictures, so they should finally finally be up very soon.

Food I'm currently craving: tabouleh
... do they eat tabouleh in Morocco??