Täglich Wiederkehrendes Abenteuer

After our loud night, we were just a hair tired in the morning, but we were pumped to face the day and to see Addy! We got all dressed and headed out into the city in search of breakfast. We headed down toward the main square where we were planning on meeting Addy. Along the way we saw these guys power washing the sidewalks with a fire hose. They hooked their little van up to a water source, then a pump inside the van got the water to high pressure. We later learned that they do this all the time… because people are into public urination here. We’ll leave it at that.

We eventually made it to the main square and found several cafes and restaurants.

We picked a nice on with pictures of breakfast looking food and went in. The waiter came up and asked what we wanted… in Spanish. Joni explained in Spanish (how many languages does this girl know?!) that we don’t speak much Spanish. The waiter then whipped out a smaller version of the pictures that initially lured us in, and we got food ordered by pointing and saying “dos” (two). It was kinda funny.

The food arrived and was devoured in record time. That was convenient, because it was almost time to meet Addy! We had just enough time to do a lap around the square to see everything before Addy arrived. Then, about three seconds later, Mike arrived and we got to meet him. He’s from England. We stood around and talked for a bit, I did the phone book tear, and then we went to a cafe for “Cafe con leche”, or coffee with milk.

Not wanting to be left out of my own picture taking:

The coffee was actually really good. They brought out a cup about half full of coffee, then poured milk in it right at the table. I added the little sugar packet to it as well. I’m a little worried that Europe is turning me on to coffee! Especially cafe con leche. I’m going to have to get another one I think…

The plan after coffee was to wait a bit for some members of Addy’s group to show up, then we’d all go to this little ceramics fair that was going on. We waited in the main square, which is just what you do in Salamanca! Randomly, we saw these birds nesting on top of some tall thing. Joni thought they looked almost fake, so for just a split second I had her convinced they were animatronic.

The other member’s of Addy’s group showed up, we did introductions, then we walked the whopping two minutes to the ceramics fair!

They had a ton of really cute stuff there. We bought a few things as gifts. I guess that they use that little square for events every now and then. All I know is that I wanted this turtle cookie jar so bad, but there would have been no way to drag it to England and Ireland and eventually home with us. 🙁

After everyone had seen what they wanted to see, the group headed back into the city and the touristy part of town. We walked along and looked in a few shops. Most of the normal places where closed because Sunday was a big celebration of the patron saint of Salamanca, so kinda like you get a Monday off when July 4th hits a weekend, everyone in Salamanca was taking the day off. That’s how Addy described it.

Of course there are pretty buildings mixed in with the tourist shops.

After a while we broke away from the group and headed to where Addy was staying. The plan was for her to have lunch at home (since that’s all paid for) while Mike, Joni, and I went to lunch somewhere else. We got all the way up to Addy’s place before deciding to have her come with us as our treat, so we turned around and walked back to the main square!

We found a nice little place that had a daily menu which is a thing where you get a three course meal with drink for 10 Euro. We tried that. It was pretty decent. After lunch though, Mike had to catch a bus to start his travels home. We said goodbye to him, then headed back toward Addy’s place… again. This time though, Joni and I went to the hostel to drop the stuff we had bought off and deal with a potential room switch.

When we arrived the guy said he’d have to switch us after the first time because of a booking error. That was fine by us. When we got back though, he said that he had managed to just sort out the booking error and we didn’t need to switch. That was a little bit of a bummer since we had packed up for a room switch… and the room wasn’t exactly the nicest. Still, we’re only paying like 20 Euro a night, so can’t complain too hard!

We managed to get WiFi working as well, but we didn’t have any time to use it as we needed to go meet Addy again. The plan was for us to walk toward her place and meet her on the way, but if we missed her we’d meet back in the square. It sounded like a great plan at the time, but we failed to consider what happens if we get to her place and she never comes out. Is she already in the square, should we wait longer, what? Fortunately it didn’t matter, because we met her about a block into the walk!

We headed back to the main square to use the WiFi there. We had a Skype date with Aaron! It was a good time. The connection kept dropping, but that just made it more entertaining/annoying.

Joni also took the time to remove the now falling off ribbon from her hat. She had wanted to do that anyway, and since it had already started the process for her, she decided to finish it.

After Skyping with Aaron, we decided to get a little frozen yogurt and wander around the city. We saw this crazy wall with a hidden frog. I guess because there’s this hidden frog on the wall, frogs are a thing in Salamanca. Sometimes I don’t understand how a “thing” becomes a “thing”.

We also visited the cathedral in Salamanca.

The outside has little carvings all over the place. Addy said that at one point they needed to replace the lower section, but they didn’t want people to get confused about whether it was new or not, so they included sculpts that wouldn’t have existed when the church was first built 300 years ago. Things like an astronaut.

The inside is really, really pretty. I actually thing it might be my favorite cathedral so far.

They do have a bit of disturbing imagery though. Remember how we were grossed out by those really graphic crucifixes that we saw in that museum in Linz? Well, Salamanca has one of those.

*shudder* They also have these weird electronic votive candles.

Aside from that though, it’s a pretty normal church.

Wait, spoke too soon. They also have a statue of Mary that normally wears a black dress to mourn the loss of Jesus, but then during holidays and the patron saint celebration, they change the dress to a white one.

That’s a little odd. Oh, and they also have a relic. In this case, it’s the arm of a saint.

OK, I’m seriously done with the creepy stuff now. Here are just some pictures.

I guess there was a big earthquake a long time ago that actually cracked a lot of the stones in the cathedral. You can still see some of the cracks.

We continued on our adventure and ended up down by the river. We walked along it a bit, then sat down next to the old Roman style bridge.

After a brief rest, we walked back into the city and headed toward Addy’s place to check out a grocery store.

Well, that’s the not grocery store. That’s a random thing I took of picture of on the way back. Another random thing is their cross walk signals!

Anyway, back on topic. We got up to Addy’s place and found the supermarket, but they too were closed for the holiday. So, we said goodnight to Addy and returned to the hostel. We watched a little bit of a movie, then went to bed. We had a big day and were quite tired! And this time, no insane sirens to wake us up.