SALAMANCA

Today we went to Salamanca. It's about a two hour ride, depending on how many people need to use the toilet on the bus-- the bus slows down while someone is in the toilet.

The scenery here could easily be mistaken for our foothills, except there are cranes.  They are so much fun to see, and I got an okay picture.  They are all along this old bridge.  

So close to Portugal, but it looks different here.  For one thing, they have animals instead of just grapes and olive trees.  Secondly, they grow wheat or some kind of wheat-like crop.  

Salamanca is a really interesting city.  Very old, of course, with a university that's been here since the 700s or something.  Plus, they have a drop dead gorgeous cathedral.  

The new cathedral is only 400 years old or so, and is built into the old cathedral, which is also a fortress.

 The best thing we saw today, though, was the art nouveau and Art Deco museum.  It was small but had some very cool things, especially a lot of little table pieces, little sculptures that look like Erté. 

Part of our tour was a wonderful buffet lunch at a hotel, and for a change for that type of thing the food was good.

 Paella, nice cheeses, salad bar.  I was a very happy camper.  And of course included a little Flamenco dance concert.  

We had a nice guided walking tour in the afternoon and saw a redwood tree from California planted in the courtyard of the cathedral, a building built along the Santiago trail, which goes through Salamanca, and covered with stone representations of the shells.  

There are some interesting little jokes in Salamanca.  When some of the carving on the cathedral was replaced in the 1990s, some distinctly more modern carvings were added.  There are some endangered species (including the local storks) and there is also an astronaut and a devil eating a nice cream cone.  (I captured these pictures off the web because mine were no good.  

The other thing is that there is a Great Wall, about three stories high on one of the university buildings.  New students are brought to the wall, and if they can find the frog, it is a sign they will do well at university.  They'd better be young and have really good eye site, because it's in a corner, perched on top of a skull, and about 40 feet up.  

This is the best picture I could find of it, and it's not all that clear.  

This is the wall.  

Dinner back at the boat was an outdoor feast of traditional Portuguese foods.