It has been raining hard on and off for the last couple of days. Over night it rained really hard again and the ground and roads in the campground were muddy. Today we had planned on a long drive to Porto, but in the morning Ton mentioned that her and Kit were hoping to visit Salamanca on the way to Porto. As we told Kit and Stephen before they came out part of the beauty of traveling in RV’s was to have flexibility in your schedule. So instead of a long drive to Porto we had a 90 minute drive to Salamanca. It was a win-win for everyone.
We headed into town at 12:45 after finding out there was only one bus per hour because it was a Saturday schedule. We arrived in the center of the city, and headed over to the Plaza Mayor. It was originally built to provide housing and to act as a bull fighting ring on occasion. It is a large square with four major entries on each side of the square. Now it is full of restaurants and cafes and looked like a good place to hang out.
Before we got to the Plaza Mayor we had diverted to the market. It is another market built of cast iron from the 1870’s. The windows are stained glass and add a nice touch to the building.
Ton window shopped, but Kit picked up some cilantro and other vegetables for dinner. Ton has been fascinated by the many types of shrimp available in Spain. Today she was happy to see a shrimp with a very large claw like one we had eaten back in Roses.
Just as we were leaving the Plaza Mayor the wind started to pick up and the rain began. I told Ton that we should find a cafe or bar to pop into until the rain let up. She said that the forecast was rain all afternoon. But we did go into a bar and order a round of beers. Luckily after we were done with our beers the rain had stopped and we had blue skies for the rest of the day.
The University of Salamanca is the third oldest university in continuous operation in the world, and is the preeminent University in the Spanish speaking world. It occupies a large part of the center of Salamanca. Cervantes the writer of Don Quixote was a student here and many quotes from the novel are on the walls of the University.
Salamanca has two cathedrals that are for some reason located next to each other. They are called the old and new cathedral, though they are both quite old. We spent some time near one of the entrances looking at the stone work. Ton called me over and asked me to look at the figures by the door. A couple of them stood out, but the one that looked out of place was an astronaut carved by one of the doors during a recent reconstruction. I guess it shows that these are living buildings.
Salamanca is a joy to visit as everything is very close together. My job is navigator and every time I was given a new point to go to it turned out to be only 4 or 5 minutes walk away from where we were. This would come back to haunt me later in the day.
Our last stop was the Roman bridge across the Tormes River. The bridge itself is of mixed construction with about 2/3rds of the arches of the bridge of Roman origin and the other 1/3 of medieval origin. The bridge has been rebuilt multiple times in history but is still an impressive site.
After we crossed the bridge we decided it was time to head back to the campground. The problem is that for some reason the transit system for Salamanca is not loaded into google maps. In most cases all I do is press where we want to go into the maps and push the transit Icon. I didn’t have that today, so I was not sure where the nearest bus stop was or what time the next bus was coming.
I new we were looking for Bus 20, but I didn’t know where the nearest stop for Bus 20 was. I had a hunch and after walking for about 15 minutes we came to a bus stop, but it was not the right one. Some more staring at google maps convinced me that we needed to go to another road about 15 minutes from where we were. So off we went, but this time there was not even a bus stop. We were right by a bridge I knew we had crossed into the old city so I headed across it to a bus stop at the base of the old town. I was sure it was a stop for 20, there were about 15 different bus lines listed as stopping there but none were 20. So now truly flummoxed I told everyone we should find a taxi. So we started down the road, and just as we were about 150 meters from the bus stop we had just investigated here comes bus 20 headed for it. The bus stopped at a red light and Stephen begged him to let us on. I decided to run for the bus stop and see if I could beat him there. I don’t run like I used to and the bus beat me to the stop by quite a bit so I was sure we were going to miss it. Luckily for me a nice lady saw me lumbering towards the stop, and actually put one leg in the door of the bus so the driver could not leave until I arrived. I got on and to by time for the rest of the crew to catch up I gave him a €20 bill so he had to make a lot of change.
I felt bad because we had walked more looking for the bus stop than we had visiting the old town of Salamanca. But everyone else took it with good humor. Just as we got back to the campground the wind picked up again, the temperature dropped by several degrees, and it began raining hard. So our luck held out for the day.
The astronaut is so unusual and unusual expected. Looks like you are having a great trip.
Yes, someone had a sense of humor to put it in there. They are always good, but this year the weather has made it exceptional. (Now it will rain for the next two weeks)!