My Salamanca Weekend!

On Friday, I was laying down, attempting to nap/figure out what we (my housemate and I) were going to do this weekend because we couldn’t’ get tickets to Granada and the other locations were too expensive. With that, as I’m sitting there, a little down, the door slams open and he just gives me one of “those” grins. “We’re going to Salamanca, right?” He just proclaims to me. Naturally, my response is “mmmmm, okay?” Within 2 hours we were on a bus from Madrid to Salamanca, the lack of planning was mind-boggling, but that’s how we like to do it.

We arrived around dinnertime more or less, and we ended up eating at 10ish (which is fairly normal here), which brings me to my next point. There was an Art Festival in Salamanca for the weekend (that we didn’t know anything about). Honestly, even after watching a fair portion of it, I STILL don’t really know what it was/is. I think that we saw a solid 3-4 hours of break-dancing, and a few concerts. Which begs the question, is break-dancing still a thing? I don't think it is, but I love it anyway! There were even some protestors or something of that sort playing jazz music in the streets with a giant "man".

Overall there were just street performers and artists galore (no complaints here!) Salamanca itself is absolutely gorgeous. I would live in Salamanca, it’s amazing. The pictures should give you some sort of an idea, but it doesn’t do the city justice, it’s something else entirely. My favorite part about Salamanca is that is contains tons of little “hole-in-the-wall” historical places. There are so many historically significant places there, that some, or even quite a few, don’t have anyone in them. So, you can just walk around these ancient structures, completely alone, it’s wonderful. Aside from the many buildings, we went to three museums (Spanish Civil war Museum, Art Deco Museum, and a Freemason Museum). All of them were free, and they were all pretty cool, but I didn’t take pictures because they weren’t allowed. Furthermore, the Museum for the Freemasons was creepy. I can’t really describe why, but it was creepy. They set up rooms to show how the meetings took place and they showed off their swords and everything. I don’t know, it was extremely cool, but definitely a little creepy (some of the rooms were terrifying).

All in all, I highly recommend Salamanca and all it has to offer, especially if you are in your early 20’s because it’s definitely a college/young city. Everyone we ran into was very nice, even if most were a little more distant than most Spaniards (I suspect this is because there are quite a few international students there); we are heading out to Valencia this weekend, and the world cup starts soon, so get excited!