After Salamanca we went to Madrid. What can you say about Madrid? It has a few soccer teams, a few museums and a lot of rain. It rained all day. We went to the Reina Sofia Museum of Modern Art, saw Picasso’s works, some Salvador Dali, some other paintings from some other mixed-up-dudes, It was pretty good. The kids had some free time in the Puerta del Sol and some chose to go to the Prado Museum (of non-modern art). Parky and I found a restaurant and we had dinner, a vinito and off to be prepping for the 8 hour bus ride to Seville.
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The day before leaving Salamanca we received a special treat. We were invited to the ‘Ayuntamiento’ (City Hall). We met the Minister for Tourism and Culture in Salamanca and got to check out the mayoral digs which included a marble staircase, massive chandeliers, huge paintings of the king and a fantastic balcony overlooking Plaza Mayor.
(I promise I didn't pick this frame for the still-shot, YouTube did it all by itself. But I think it's great :)
Yesterday we (the students who chose to come) did a tour through the inside of the New Cathedral. The first stone of the 'New' Cathedral of Salamanca was laid in 1513 and it was declared complete in 1733. It underwent major repairs after an earthquake in 1755 and had a major restoration in 1992. When the restorations took place in 1992 the stonemasons and sculptors hid some details in the ornate Plateresque stonework as a time-stamp so that future generations will know that it not original 16th century sculpture. You can see them in the photos below. We also took a stroll down to the river and had a look at the old Roman bridge. Built in the 1st century AD it has just had its 2000th birthday and is still going strong. (Also Parky ate a paella that was cooked in squid ink) After the break we went to a museum of modern art. It is housed in the old jail. The jail used to be miles out of Salamanca, but as the city grew it eventually enveloped the jail and a new one was built a few more miles out of town. The old one became this. The last 2 days have been pretty full on. Aside from all of the stuff we have been doing at school, many of us took the plunge and climbed the Ieronimus Tower Tuesday. It was pretty wild. It is about 900 steps to the top of a tower built about 560 years before OH&S became the hit it currently is :) Today we started school. We were level tested, split into two groups and sent in for four hours at the coal face. The students came out of that experience looking kind of like they had just got off of the world's weirdest amusement park ride ... like they were glad they had experienced it; but were nonetheless extremely glad it was over and they could now move on with their lives. And move on they did do, heading home and grabbing some lunch, before coming back into town and taking part in a walking tour of the history of Salamanca. We visited the monastery where Christopher Columbus was sentenced to death for being a heretic, before being rescued by the Spanish Queen Isabella and sent to try to find a back route to India. I never realised that Columbus died not ever knowing that he had discovered a totally new continent (for the Europeans, I'm pretty sure the native Americans knew it existed). Apparently he thought he had been to India until he died. Anyhoo, then we moved on to the New Cathedral, the one that is only 600 years old. Not that old one around the corner that was built in 1200 and something AD. The New Cathedral offered some very interesting stories and some amazing stone-masonry. Such intricate handiwork must have taken decades to complete, maybe centuries. From the New Cathedral we moved to the University, also founded in 1200 and something AD. We learned a lot about plateresque stone carving and frogs on skulls. I'll post some pics tomorrow.
Hola a todos! It has finally happened, we have arrived in Salamanca. It is everything I remember and a bit more. Parky and I have been to Salamanca a couple of times now and spent a total of about 4 weeks here, but today was my first time to go outside in a t-shirt. It was a fresh 9*c, but at least it was above zero this time. We arrived at 1:30am yesterday in the 'madrugada' as the Spanish say. Madrugada means early morning in Spanish, but not early morning, like I just got up and had a cup of tea. More like I've just finished dinner, had a glass of wine and now it's the madrugada so I'll go out and meet my friends. It's beautiful that our host families had no compunction with meeting us at 1am. It's just a perfectly normal time to meet someone on Sunday in the madrugada. We were all pretty tired. We met at 1:30pm at the School of Languages on Friday, got to the airport at 3:30pm, left at 6:10 and spent 3 hours in Melbourne before boarding our international flight to Dubai. 13 hours and 30 minutes later we landed in Dubai (I slept 6 hours on that flight, which I think is more than everyone else combined). We spent a good 7 hours doing some window shopping and using some free wifi in the Dubai airport before boarding a plane and flying 8.5 hours to Madrid, going through customs, getting on a bus and taking a 2.5 hour bus journey to Salamanca with a bunch of students from Venice who were waaaaaaaaaay more energetic than us and sang bass-driven, upbeat euro-pop melodies for the whole two and a half hours. When we arrived here is was 6:30am in Australia, on Sunday thank you very much! Here are some airport photos. I have about 70. They were really fun to take and seemed really interesting at the time, but in the cold light of day they are just photos of people doing some poses in the inside of various airports. See you tomorrow for another update :) |
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