Salamanca, Spain.

My very last weekend excursion I decided to keep it to one day, and found myself in college town Salamanca, famous for its university. Unfortunately for me and my friend Courtney, we came at a time when all the actual Spanish students were on summer vacation, so the city was full of old people and American students studying abroad. I'm pretty sure we heard (and spoke) more English than Spanish the whole day. We got lucky because one of Courtney's hometown friends happened to be in Salamanca for the summer, so we had someone pick us up from the bus station and show us around town.

Salamanca's Plaza Mayor - really similar to the one in Madrid

This is me, probably delirious after another crazy bus ride

Salamanca is pretty small so we were able to take a walking tour and see some of the important sites of Salamanca, the first of which is la Universidad de Salamanca. At one part of the university, there is a wall with intricate stonework, where a small tiny frog sits atop a skull. According to legend, students who were able to point out the small frog with no assistance would pass all of their courses. Too bad for me I needed a little help, so I guess I'm going to have to fend for myself in future classes!

La Universidad de Salamanca

Major props if you can find the frog here, but you probably have to zoom in and such

The second main attraction was the cathedral, which was divided into the "old cathedral" and "new cathedral." Funny thing was, both of them were constructed before the discovery of America, so go figure, haha.

One of the two cathedrals in Salamanca

Here you can see the new one and the old...just not sure which is which, sorry!

The rest of the day was spent lounging around in cafes and shopping. Haha the nice thing about Salamanca was that since it was so much smaller compared to Madrid, that they had all the same stores but with much fewer customers, so it wasn't shoulder-to-shoulder competition like it is in Madrid.

The last cafe we sat around in before taking off for Madrid otra vez

Embracing the academia in Salamanca