Weekend in Salamanca

After a hard week, there is nothing better  than preparing a short trip with your partner. This time, we decided to visit Salamanca, a medium size city in the West of Spain, close to Portugal.

Last Friday, after work, we decided to drive to Salamanca where we book a room for two nights at the hotel "Gran Hotel Corona Sol", we found a pretty decent deal paying less than 90€, including breakfast. Getting there from Madrid by car is quite easy. We took the toll motorway AP6 that allow you to drive through the Guadarrama tunnel, saving you a nice driving in the mountain (also petrol and time), then we drove past Avila (another beauty that we will visit soon enough to show you in this blog).


After 2,30h and 220km, we arrived to this historic city and one of the first sights on our way to the hotel was the Roman bridge from the 1^st century AC, with the old city at its back.

And at its end you can find the remains of a Roman bull statue. This was just the first stop:

We arrived at our hotel around 7 pm,  we left our luggage in the room and looked for a parking space (which was a bit complicate at that time). After that, everything was set up for a wonderful weekend in Salamanca.

First place to visit, an old hospital, situated just opposite our hotel. It is called "Santisima Trinidad" general hospital and it was created in 1581, while some of its buildings date back to 1204. We were lucky and from our room we were able  to see the Cathedral and this nice hospital (the white building at the back of the picture is our hotel)

Our second stop leaded us to the Casa de las Conchas which was built in the 15th century and it is decorated with 350 scallops' shells (symbol of the Order of Santiago).

Currently it is a public library and you have the chance to visit its inner court.

As we were amazed by what we were seeing, it was time to visit the famous "Plaza Mayor" (this is the way the main square in every city is called in Span, and it is usually located in the centre). This Plaza was built in the traditional Spanish baroque style, and was finished in 1755. It was firstly designed to be used for bullfighting, which happened for about 100 years. In 1988, UNESCO declared the city World Heritage Site, an in the center of the Plaza, there is a plaque highlighting it.

After our walk, we decided it was time to have something to eat. On a first moment we thought about tapas, which are quite nice in the city, but we finally decided to eat a fish and meat  mixture, maybe a little bit too much for the two of us ;) .

We renewed energy, we followed our path to the hotel but... we found that something really interesting was going on in the city this weekend...

A Harp competition for young students was being held in the city and that Saturday, a brilliant young Welsh talent, Benjamin Creighton Griffiths, was playing. It was a good plan for Saturday evening.

On Saturday, we visited the University of Salamanca. It’s the oldest founded university in Spain and the third oldest European university in continuous operations. One of its  oldest buildings  is the plateresque facade, where the legend says that any student  capable of finding the frog hidden without help will be lucky on the studies.

After a while, I could find the flog sitting on a skull. Below you can find the picture but I think it is better to leave you the chance to visit Salamanca and try to find it by yourself...

Then our path lead us to the old and new cathedrals... yes you have read it right... two cathedrals... From the outside they look like one huge cathedral.

A curiosity of the new cathedral is that when the renewal works  renewal finished, it needed to be signed using something from that date and in this case you can see an astronaut in one of its entrances...

After a relaxing ice cream, it was almost about time to go to the Harp Concert.  I must tell you how impressive was his performance. I strongly recommend to check his music in youtube.

The concert lasted one and half hours and it introduced myself in the world of harp music (I’m sure someone will be happy after reading this).

There are tons of places to visit and one of the most important things in life... FOOD!! you can find here some of the finest Spanish ham coming directly from Guijuelo, a chorizo, ham and bacon pie called "hornazo", and lots of tasteful food are waiting for you...