Salamanca and Zamora

We had lost a few days due to the kerfuffle with Jill's pack, and taking extra time to walk from Ávila, and so in Salamanca we decided to abandon thoughts of walking further, and instead took the time to explore Salamanca. Mind you, we clocked up many kilometres while exploring. 

Salamanca is a University city with a population of just under 150,000, and has many old buildings to explore, and a wonderful, arcaded, Plaza Mayor.  Plaza Mayor's are great places to sit and watch the world go by, which we did, quite happily!  It is a "young" city with the student population making it an energetic and vibrant place to be.

One corner of the arcaded Plaza Mayor 
The Ayuntamiento, in the centre, was unadorned  when we first saw it, but when we returned an hour or so later the Semana Santa  banners were on display (below)

Salamanca is also a city that the Via de la Plata passes through as it heads north.  There is an albergue there, and as we criss crossed the city we passed over shell waymarks embedded in the footpath.

We crossed the River Tormes on the old bridge, now only for pedestrians, so that we could look back at the city.


There is a wonderful art deco museum in town and we both greatly enjoyed spending time looking at the beautiful, elegant things on display.  It is strictly "no photos" and so I cannot show you, the beautiful stained glass windows, and ceiling, nor the exquisite figurines with their elegant flowing lines, or the lovely Lalique vases aplenty.

Casa Lis, the art deco museum.
... and a web picture of some of the stained glass (I didn't break the no photo rule!)

The detail of carvings on the exterior of the buildings was amazing.  Some of it looked like fine lacework, but it was made of stone.


The Cathedral in Salamanca



Somewhere on this panel there is a carved frog and finding him is supposed to bring good luck for the year

St. Estoban 
The house of shells.  All those bumps on the wall are shells, the symbol of the Camino. 

We visited not only the cathedral, but the huge convent of St. Estoban.  We were staggered at the size of this building, and we were able to go up the lovely stairs to the choir, and the upper cloister.

The cloister at St. Estoban. 
The stairs leading to the choir and the upper cloister.
The church from the upper gallery.
I don't usually show photos of myself, but I had to use myself (no-one else was available) to show the size of this music manuscript.
The four sided music stand in the choir with a gigantic manuscript in front of it.
Looking down, from the upper cloister.
While upstairs in the upper cloister the cigüeña (stork) distracted us.

Jill was heading home in a few days, and so there was souvenir shopping to do as we wandered around. We also had jobs to do.  Apart from the standard laundromat visit, Jill needed to buy her ticket to Barcelona and I needed to organise my tickets to get to the various places I planned to visit during Semana Santa (holy week).

After Salamanca we headed to Zamora.  Jill for 1 day and me for 2.  But that's for the next post.





















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