Another trip organized by Quebra Tour; we left Coimbra quite early, around 7:20 since the trip by bus would take around 4 hours. They decided to stop in Ciudad Rodrigo on the way, which I though was nice to see but we had only hour to see and was not worth the lost time for Salamanca. Though a small town, Ciudad Rodrigo has several interesting monuments, very noteworthy are the thick walls completely encircling the town with the Castillo de Enrique II protecting the southern part. Then we quickly saw the Plaza Mayor and finally the beautiful Cathedral, built between the 12th and 14th centuries and close by the Capilla de Cerralbo built in the 16th century which due to its size looks more like a church. So after this quick stop we got back on the bus and headed on towards Salamanca. We reached the city around 1pm and had a brief tour of the main monuments from the outside including the Cathedral and University. I then told my friends that we could just split off from the group and go by ourselves. We decided to see the Cathedrals first since they are the main monument of the city. Ticket cost was 4€ for students and included both cathedrals, old and new. They now look like one single church but actually, they are separate, the old one having been constructed between the 12th and 14th centuries in the Romanesque/Gothic styles while the new one, attached to the old one but much larger was built between the 16th and 18th centuries in Late Gothic/Baroque styles. We began by visiting the Old Cathedral first, that had numerous frescoes all around and many different chapels, rooms and tombs, including a small cloister; particular was the Capilla de los Anaya with beautiful tombs. Then we moved on to the New Cathedral, immense and beautiful, with various chapels and thick columns supporting the vaulted ceiling. The whole visit took us nearly 2 hours and once outside we were surprised to learn that even here the damages of the 1755 Lisbon eathquake had been felt, and in fact the façade of the Cathedral, following several restorations, had received new sculptures such as a dragon with an ice cream and an astronaut added in 1999. From there we walked through the city streets and ended up in Plaza Mayor, one of the most beautiful in Spain. We were then hungry so we decided to look around for a nice place to eat tapas. I also asked a few locals for some nice and cheap places around, and we eventually settled for a tapas bar whose name I can't remember. It was actually a really great place cause the tapas were quite cheap around 1,20€ each and were quite big too, plus once in a while the waiters would bring out hot plates of tapas which tasted really good so 5 stars for me. After eating we didn't really have time to visit anything else so we just went back to the bus while looking at churches and building from the outside. Once we reached the bus I spoke, in portuguese, to the bus driver who told me he used to live near Verona and would drive to Liguria very often. After heading back to Coimbra we did a brief stop at the border between Spain and Portugal to buy a few souvenirs and then continued on. On both ways since the guy from Quebra Tour knew I spoke portuguese, had me translate on the bus' microphone all the info for the non portuuguese speakers such as the plan of visit etc. A bit embarrassing but fun too. Overall I was quite disappointed not having been able to see much but I will definitely go back to such a wonderful city, especially for Patanegra!
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| Cathedral of Ciudad Rodrigo |
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| The Cathedral in Salamanca |
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| The Plaza Mayor |
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| View of Salamanca from the bus |
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