To Valencia, and BEYOND!: Ferb, I Know What We're Going to Do Today

Hello Everyone! Welcome to my first official blog on the road. This is the part of the adventure where I'm going everywhere (Current plan is to hit 14 countries, and who knows where else I'll end up by July). Except that because last week was finals, I'm writing about what happened last weekend. And yes, to all you wary-eyed observers, I did leave town the weekend before finals. And I don't regret it for a minute.

So... Thursday. I went to class, and we reviewed for the exam. Despite how much everybody complained about our Lit class throughout the semester, that was one of the better ones as far as studying for finals went. He gave us a list of questions with the names of texts and main ideas that he would be asking us about, and told us to study those, and then he went over them in class. It was nice. So then after class, I went back to the dorm, grabbed my bag (pictured below)

And headed out the door.
Now, the reason my bag is pictured below, is because that bag represents personal growth. I brought that bag, and a purse for an entire weekend in Salamanca. And I even put food in there! I brought like 6 apples. And my computer. And my notebook to study from. Not that I actually did any studying, but it was there. I would never have been able to do that in December. If nothing else, this trip has taught me how to pack lightly, and goodness knows that was a lesson I needed to learn.

So I went to Valencia and got on a train to Madrid, and it was a really fun train ride. Because as soon as I got on the train and found my seat, I discovered that the young man next to me was struggling with a giant adapter trying to plug it into the train outlet, and when I corrected him in Spanish he responded in English. So that was how I discovered that my seat mate was a student at Cornell traveling around Europe after the end of his study abroad in the UK. See, I had been planning on writing a blog or two on that train, but I asked him if he was American or Canadian about 10 minutes before we pulled out of the station, and we didn't really stop the conversation until we got off in Madrid.

I have to admit that one of my favorite things about travel is meeting people like this. Because we had a great time. And he was just randomly placed next to me on a train, and there went almost two hours of conversation. He was finishing up his travels, and had stopped off in Valencia, before heading to Madrid to get to wherever he was flying out of. We chatted about the city, and about the places he had been (and I am going) and how to use Eurail passes, and what it's like living in Europe, and languages and college, and traded travel tips, and it was great fun. A good start to a great weekend.

So then I got to Madrid and I took the cercanias train to Madrid Chamartin, which is another station in Madrid. Because Madrid is a big city. I had never used cercanias in Madrid before, so it took me a bit to figure out, but I got there eventually, with plenty of time before my train left. This train was longer and not a high-speed one, but it was clean and nice and had outlets, and I wrote a couple of blogs while I was on it.

But my favorite part of that train ride was the view. Now, in Spain, most people flock to the coasts, or at least to the South. Barcelona, Andalucia, Sevilla, Granada. Warm and exotic and nice. And I'd been a lot of those places on my trips prior to this one, and loved every minute of it. But I know I mentioned in my Cadiz post that I gave my heart to Castilla, and when I looked out the window I knew it was true. I've loved the warmth and the coast and the sea and ocean, but I felt like Bilbo, "I want to see mountains again, mountains, Gandalf!" People always tell me, when we get into discussions of Lord of the Rings and which character we would be, that I'm Gimli (I've known people to be worried that I'd be offended by that.) (Oh, people who don't know LotR, Gimli is the main dwarf in Lord of the Rings, he's comic relief, wields an axe, tends to be a bit impulsive, and winds up being best friends with an elf. I'll let you draw your own conclusions.) But people always tell me I'd be Gimli, and among other things, my dad makes fun of me for being a dwarf, but, I confess something in me just relaxed when I looked out the window and saw this

It was what I needed.

So after a lovely journey through the mountains, I wound up in the lovely city of Salamanca. I was unable to find hostels in the city, so I wound up using airbnb to rent a room in the apartment of a lovely woman named Teresa. From the train station, I found the apartment without much trouble, and Teresa was very accommodating. The apartment was a little old, but comfortable, and only maybe 10 minutes from the old part of the city. There was also a grocery store downstairs, and Teresa let me use her kitchen, so I spent my first night in Salamanca cooking my favorite lazy college student meal (pasta with cut up bell peppers and tomato. And I usually add bacon, but when in Spain, you use chorizo instead.) After I ate, I turned in. I love traveling, but it can wear you out a bit. And I think that on this big journey I am going to wind up doing a lot of going to bed early and getting up early. Which is very different from my schedule in Valencia, let me tell you. It's so hard to go to bed early when you don't finish dinner until after 10pm.

So I woke up very late the next morning, and I had some breakfast and chilled for a bit, before I head out to explore. I initially planned to find the Plaza Mayor, but there may or may not have been a protest in the streets, so I just kind of wandered.

I mean, they were pretty streets, so it wasn't exactly a hardship.
But, fortunately, I did eventually find the Plaza Mayor, and the tourist office therein, where I picked up a handy dandy map of the city, and some information about the sites in the city.

And really, the Plaza Mayor is a site in and of itself.

But more on that later.

Also, it was all decked out, because it's Holy Week (henceforth known as Semana Santa, because that's easier for me to remember) and it was the weekend of Palm Sunday, so the whole city was a-flutter.

So Salamanca is known as the "ciudad dorada" or "golden city" because it is built mostly out of this stone that comes from the river and it's very soft, and it has this kind of golden color about it.

Salamanca also has two cathedrals.

Sort of. See, this is... wait... I can't tell...

Nope! Ok, I know where I am. Sorry. There's another big church the same color, and I couldn't remember. Right! Two Cathedrals. So, it's slightly more complicated, but for now, let's just go with the tower on the right was built in like 1200, and then in like 1500, they were like, "this is a small and dinky cathedral, let's build a new one!" But then somebody who had a sense of history was like, "But in 500 years, they're going to think that this cathedral is very old, and be very impressed." and someone else was like, "you're right. So let's build ANOTHER cathedral, one that isn't small and dinky, but we'll attach it, and then we'll have history AND an actually nice cathedral." And so it goes. And from outside you really can't tell very much which is which. They did a good job. Inside it's a bit more obvious.

Also, this tower tilts slightly, because it was damaged in the Earthquake of Lisbon. This is the old tower.

This is the façade of the new Cathedral. It was very impressive.
So, while I had some general idea of where I was going, I didn't do a lot on Friday, because I had to register for classes at 3:30, and I was tired, because I'd been really busy the week before (remember, there were no blogs the week before Salamanca? That's why.) So I just gave myself permission to wander and explore the city, and pick out what I wanted to do Saturday.

So I wound up down by the river, when I saw this sign

which says "Salamanca Lazarillo de Tormes." Lazarillo de Tormes, is a famous figure from Spanish literature, he's from a novel written in the Siglo de Oro that I had to read part of for my lit class. And he named Lazarillo de Tormes, because he was born in the middle of the river Tormes, which runs through Salamanca.

So they put up a statue for him. He's the kid. He's leading a blind man, it's part of the story. And don't go thinking that he's a good person for it. Lazarillo is a pícaro. One of the originals. But point being, I didn't know that the Tormes was in Salamanca (or I'd forgotten) so this was a nice surprise.

And I got to look back a the city from the river.

This is a Roman bridge, much of which is original, which is impressive. Well, I mean, it's ME on the Roman Bridge.

This is the river Tormes.

That's also the Roman Bridge, though I think that's the reconstructed bit.

Right above my increasingly messy hair, you will note the cathedral in the background.

I'm not sure why I took this upside down, but if you flip it (which if my computer were not being frustrating, I would have done already) it's the skyscape of Salamanca. Which I think is cool.

It's a pretty city.

And then I went up some random road back into it.

And I got to look out over the river and the more outlying areas.

Also, it was a beautiful day. I just lay by the river in the shade reading for a bit. It was great. Also, Game of Thrones is addicting.

It's a pretty city. I don't know what that tower belongs to.

So on my way back to the apartment to register for classes, I passed (accidentally) the famous Casa de Conchas (House of Shells) which today houses the Public Library.

As you might have noticed, it is covered in carvings of seashells.

So then I went back and I registered for classes, and I dealt with the inevitable complications that came with that, and I rested a bit, but then I went back out to the city to explore some more.

And I found Saint Esteban's Monastery.

And this is what the title refers to. Because I walked around the city getting ideas all day long, but I saw this giant church that just stood sort of all by itself on a little hill, and I couldn't even get a picture of it the way I wanted, because it didn't fit in the frame of my phone. But I just looked at it, and I though, "I am going to visit that monastery."

And I did.

Just not Friday.

Instead, I went back up towards the cathedral and the Plaza Mayor.

The city has such lovely views.

And I love walking into the closed Plaza Mayor.

So, when I went to the tourist office, one of the things that I noticed was a sign advertising tours, one of which was about "legends, picarescas, and curiosities" (except it was in Spanish) and it was a night tour, and I'd heard that the Plaza Mayor was beautiful by night, and I thought I should check this tour out.
So I met up with the guide at 8pm, and she was a little cautious about me coming, because the tour was in Spanish, and I was the only foreigner, and since it was a tour about legends and such, it was a little bit more colloquial language. But I told her I'd been in Valencia for several months, and she agreed that I would be OK. And I was. I mean, I didn't get every word, but I got the gist of it, and I had a great time to boot. And she did explain some of the more obviously confusing concepts to me. So it all worked out.

Our first stop was this building, which the government now uses, but used to be a palace. Acco-
Oh. Hold on. We started in the Plaza Mayor, and I promised to tell you about this, because this is good.

So Salamanca's claim to fame is the 3rd oldest university in the world (or 4th according to Wikipedia, but Salamanca disputes that. In case you're wondering, the first is Bologna, the second Oxford, and I would guess that Salamanca is disputing Cambridge for 3rd place. Whatever, it's an old Uni) And that's kind of how I wound up there, because I wanted to go somewhere that weekend, but I didn't really know WHERE, and a lot of places were too far away, and this was a decent distance, and I'd heard of it before, and I wanted to go somewhere different, and that's where I wound up.

So, back in the day the university had this... tradition. If you got a doctorate at the University, you were supposed to sponsor a bullfight in the Plaza Mayor (which was also the bullring and the ground of which used to be covered in sand, not stone) with 3 bulls, and for the last bull, you were supposed to go down into the Plaza and kill the bull yourself (fortunately, the graduate got a horse, he didn't have to do it on foot) to represent that you had conquered passion through knowledge. And then you mixed the bull's blood with oil and painted "Victor" on a wall somewhere. And to me this just seems dangerous. Also, expensive. Apparently, I'm not the only one who had these thoughts, because the poor students would wait to take their exams until a member of the royal family died and the country entered 2 years of mourning, during which time bullfights were forbidden. And thus they got out of the tradition.

Anyway, this palace that the people lived in.

It's now a government building, and has a temporary statue of Jesus and the last supper in it.

And that's Judas standing all by himself. And I have lots of theological comments about it, which I shall keep to myself. Because I'm already on like my 4th tangent of the blog.

But the palace was pretty, and there was a rumor that there are statues in there built to spite the important people of the city who wouldn't let the bishop bring his mistress into the city. It's almost certainly not true, but I love the idea that he used these grotesque statues to mock the people who tried to get between him and his mistress.

Also, apparently there are these medallions all over the city that are supposed to help people learn. This building has ones for Cleopatra and her lovers.

Because the medallions are vices and virtues, stories of good and stories of evil.

Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, and Mark Antony are obviously the vices.

But I have always found the carvings and paintings of vices and hell and such to be much more fascinating than those of virtues or heaven.

They've got an edge. Pictures of heaven are pretty and all, but pictures of hell are interesting.

The sun was going down a bit, but we saw this cool old tower.

Which I think was built by someone to keep the other people in the city from attacking them.

This is a statue of Christopher Columbus pointing at nowhere in particular, which caused the students to make up a dirty rhyme about one of their professors whose house it was pointing towards. *sighs* students never change, do they?

I thought this was a cute little church.

This is probably the closest I got to capturing San Esteban as it impressed me.

But this is the façade again, and it's so pretty in the evening.

So then we came to the Cave of Salamanca, which was the entrance to this whole system of underground tunnels that connects the city all over, and also used to be where the teachers whose subjects were forbidden would teach their students.

It's still cool and vaguely ominous.

There used to be a church above it, but now it's gone,

and if you go up, there's just a really pretty view of the monastery.

This is a plaza by the cathedral.

Which is gorgeous at night.

You really see why they call it the golden city when you go around at dusk.

So there's some very famous Spanish story that I didn't read in lit class called "La Celestina" and Salamanca and Toledo fight over where it is supposed to have happened, but it involves some lovers who meet in a garden, and so Salamanca has this lovely garden where it supposedly happened.

And we went to see it.

And even if I've never read the story, it was so cool to be there.

Because it's up above the city

and the sun is going down.

And you get to see all the sights in the distance and all lit up.

It looks like liquid gold.

It was so cool. I honestly didn't pay much attention to the guide during this part, because...

I was preoccupied.

So we continued on our adventures, and learned about the guy who climbs up the belltower all the way to the very top every year.

And it was nice, because it was interesting, but also, because I love wandering around these beautiful, well-lit Spanish cities at night.

Theres' something really magical about it.

You turn a corner, and there's a building that was build 800 years ago.

And I hope that never stops being incredible to me.

I'm not sure what that is, but it looks so cool peaking out through the streets.

This is the historic building of the university.

I know it's blurry, but this is a cool story. So, that is a picture of 3 skulls on the façade, and there are lots of theories about why they are there, but the one on the left has a bump on top of his head, that is actually a frog. And the tradition went that if you could find the frog, you would have good luck in your studies. And so frogs as symbol of academic luck and success.

The University building.

Ok, so you see the sculpture things on top of the building?

That was more of the moralizing and warning stuff. It depicted the sins typical of the students, and tried to warn against them.

I don't think it worked. Because, funny story, they used to have exams during or right before or right after Holy Week, because Lent was a period of fasting and contemplation, and they thought the students might be better at studying during that time. Especially since all the prostitutes got kicked out the the city for Lent. And actually the day after Easter is still a big celebration for the locals in Salamanca, where they go out to the countryside for the day, because there used to be such a big party when the students were done with finals, and they could cross the river.