Blog Five – Salamanca

Published by Alastair Reid on September 23, 2018September 23, 2018

Salamanca [20th-23rd September]

And so into Spain, with minimal notice taken of the border with Portugal. Quite glad to have the only significant bus journey of the trip done with, as the bus was made for Portuguese folk, who are generally smaller, and so I felt like I spent three hours in a straightjacket.

Salamanca, perched on its hill, looked quite spectacular as we approached, and didn’t disappoint. It gives the impression of being a very well-heeled city, with a keen sense of both its history and its current self worth. The old city is crammed with ancient buildings, any one of which would be a top tourist attraction in Scotland.

Salamanca is another ancient University town, older than Coimbra, and many of the superbly preserved and maintained buildings speak to the ancient intertwining of the Catholic Church and the University – indeed the Uni was in existence for a couple of centuries before it had any of its own teaching buildings. It gives off an air of being a slightly stuffier and more self-important institution, but its Freshers clearly celebrate their arrival in a similar fashion to Coimbra, with many wildly excited groups singing, dancing and chanting their way round the old city. Either that, or the little buggers followed us from Portugal!

By accident on our first evening, we walked the two minutes from our hotel into the fabulous Plaza Major, just before dusk. By the time we had ordered drinks, we were in a front row seat for the sequential switching on of first the Plaza’s lamps and arched colonnade lights, then the full floodlighting of the honey-coloured stone buildings forming the sides of the square. The ambience was so lovely that we made sure we did the same on each of the three nights of our stay.

Also accidentally, we arrived at a restaurant in a small square which took our fancy, which later popped up on Tripadvisor as one of the top recommendations. Some confusion followed. Fiona did not actually try to eat one of the place mats (Karen Thomson – please take note) but it took some time before we clicked that the menus had two functions, and the waiter didn’t want them back.

We’d stopped earlier for a less successful lunch, in a café which looked fine. However, the chef had obviously attended the same cooking school as Kathleen. Even though they were only thin chicken fillets in a sandwich, the chicken was concerningly pink in the middle. Not great, but we appear to have survived selective eating of the re-cooked stuff.

Much tramping around Salamanca ensued and we visited our fill of historic buildings, finishing up in time for me to catch a fine Hibs victory at Dundee on Hibs TV, followed by Hestia Menorca vs. Iberojet Mallorca basketball on YouTube. Isn’t technology fab.

Our final night’s sleep in Salamanca was rudely interrupted by the fire alarm going off at 4am. Although it stopped and started three times, like a good safety man I made my way downstairs to investigate. On the way to Reception, through open windows I heard this tumultuous noise outside, so I thought some major incident was underway. Turned out to be a false alarm, and the noise was just Salamanca at 4am on a Sunday morning!

Like all of our previous destinations so far, we’d definitely like to return to Salamanca, not because the length of our stay didn’t allow us to take in enough of its attractions (sorry for the double negative!) but just to experience the city’s unique ambience once again.

My dozen favourite images from our stay in Salamanca are included in the gallery below. Click on a thumbnail to see a bigger image.

Image Gallery