Trip Day 13 A - Salamanca Spain

Saturday July 4 - Part A

Today we are driving into Spain to Salamanca. The green group leaves in the bus at 8:30 am. After a couple of hours we have a stop.

The countryside looked mainly like this. It seemed to be lacking water. 

At about 11:30 am we had exited the bus, had our whispers ready and listen to the local guide. The main topic and buildings to visit was the Univercity of Salamanca, founded in 1218, it is the oldest institution of higher education and the fourth oldest globally. Very impressive!

It never fails. A wedding was going to be happening in this church.

We had a peak through the open door and ...

... waited for the bride.

The Plaza Mayor, a very impressive place.

And right there was our restaurant where we were going to have lunch. Sara had asked us the day before what our choice of meal would be. 

My starter was Poached egg with garlic prawns, potato chips and ali oli. It would have been really great if it had been bread instead of potato chips which were hard and didn't pick up the lovely sauce and runny egg yolk.

The main course we both had was Iberian pork tenderloin with pistachio, apple and goat cheese. I was very happy with mine and decided that I needed to let Maren's friend Pia know about this combination. James was not quite so happy because he said one of his two pieces was very hard. Mine melted in my mouse. (Iberian pork comes mainly from wild black pigs which eat nothing but acorns which gives their meat a lovely taste.)

The dessert was Santiago almond cake with white chocolate and salted caramel ice cream. 

Then we had some freetime and walked slowly towards the meeting point to walk to the bus. But on the way to the restaurant we had seen briefly this stork's nest on top of this church. I wanted to find it again and take a photo. We saw lots of storks all over from the bus between Portugal and Spain.

The cathedral was the meeting point. 

We were told to find some carved figures at the pillars on the left side of the doors. Found the astronaut ...

... and the Whimsical Figure which is a combination of dragon eating ice-cream with a head looking more like a lion. The figures were added during the 1992 restoration. It is actually a combination of two cathedrals, one from the 12th century and a new one from the 16th-18th century. 

While we were sitting in the shade waiting for our leader (since we are not really shoppers) we watch these (probably) students setting up and making music. Quite nice. 

The bus ride back was very nice too but hard to take photos of the beautiful landscape. It was quite hilly and curvy. To see Salamanca in Spain was another good experience. Now back to the boat (eh, ship!).