Our next stop was Zamora, a town located in the province of Castilla y León. Zamora is the city with the most Romanesque style churches in all of Europe. We walked around a castle and later enjoyed the wine from Quinto de Bublé wineries.
We arrived to Salamanca at around 8 o'clock ate dinner and walked around the city before going out for the night. The University of Salamanca, which was founded in 1218, is the oldest university in Spain. 30,000 students attend the university, which makes it a very fun city to go out in. In Spain and other European countries students start attending university later than most students in the United States. I love being in Spain right now because although I have already graduated from university, I am the same age (or younger) as all the other Spanish and international students.
La Plaza mayor in Salamanca seems to be the meeting point for people of all ages. I ran into a group of university aged guys, dressed in traditional clothing playing traditional instruments and serenading the people in Plaza de Mayor. From the pension we were staying at I heard people singing the song "bailando" and complimented one of the members on his singing abilities. He responded to me in Portuguese (which I'm used to because the city I currently live in is located less than 20 miles from the border of Portugal. This group of friends from Portugal was visiting Salamanca for the weekend to play their music and have a good time. I later saw them them in the discoteca.
We stayed in a pension in Plaza mayor and I shared an apartment area with seven other guys, because there was a mixup. One of the coordinators was on the phone trying to figure something out, when one of my best friends in Vigo, Carlos, suggested I stay with them because there was an extra bed in their room. Among all 8 of us we shared a bathroom (if anyone was keeping score I took the shortest shower haha)
We went out for some beers and then met up with the rest of the group to a bar where we each paid 5 euros for unlimited beer and sangria. I was standing next to a girl names Petra and our friend Julio asked Petra and I if we were related. I didn't even know Petra, but we became quick friends because, "we are cousins." People were actually really confused when we said we weren't related because everyone automatically thinks that I'm from a central European country like the majority of the foreign students. We then went to a discoteca and as I mentioned before I saw the Portuguese students who were part of "la tuna" I came back to the pension at around 5:30. It is not uncommon to go out until 7 or 8 in the morning in Spain, but we had a long day of touring ahead so most of us wanted to go to sleep.
The next day we ate delicious croissants and then went to visit the roof of a cathedral. My favorite part of the trip was climbing the spiral staircases. In order to prevent collisions there was a clock displaying the amount of time we had to wait to either climb up or down the stairs.
After the visit to the cathedral we saw people dressed in fancy clothes and realized that a wedding was about to occur so we sat near the cathedral to watch everyone gather and we even saw the bride! When we left we danced around the city to the music of the street musicians and ate lunch. I ate lunch with my awesome roommates. We had a fantastic city tour and walked along the river. We then ate dinner all together and I sat with my 3 german friends and 2 greek friends. We checked out some bars before settling on a discoteca. I would like to thank my German friends (special shout out to Sophie for teaching me to say, "that is a weird guy." I didn't want to tell my friend in Spanish or English (because I didn't want the weird guy to hear) so I told my friend in German, he told me that I was understandable so that's good enough for me.
The next day I went with Carlos to buy something for lunch before we departed for Puebla de Sanabria. We passed a street musician and his friends and they asked me to take a picture of them, and then the musician said he wanted to sing a song for me. I told them that Carlos and I were visiting Salamanca for the weekend and that we lived in Vigo, and as coincidences always seem to occur, on of the musicians is originally from Vigo.
Puebla de Sanabria is a city located 20 kilometers away from Portugal, it is located on top of a hill with a beautiful castle. We had the obligatory cafe con leche and chocolate and then walked around the village and enjoyed the views of the river. We walked around the castle like zombies, because we hadn't slept very much over the past few days. I am back in Vigo and happy to have slept more than 3 hours.
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