Weekend Excursion to Ávila and Salamanca, or “Don’t be that girl who threw up on the bus, don’t be that girl who threw up on the bus…”

(Sorry for posting a week late!)

…yepp, you guessed correctly. I was That Girl Who Threw Up On the Bus.

Let me tell you, it was a windy road in the mountains from Toledo to Ávila Friday morning. I could just feel my breakfast, toast with marmalade, swimming around in café con leche in my stomach, which, quivering and lurching with every slight movement, felt as though it were suspended from strings in the tour bus. Toward the end of the ride, we rounded an especially sharp corner, and my strong desire NOT to be That Girl Who Threw Up On the Bus lost out to my biological need to puke. One of the coordinators of the program, Yuki, is an angel; she took my bag of upchucked breakfast and told me not to worry, just to sleep the rest of the way. I swear, in that moment, I would have given her one of my kidneys. (I maintain that the real reason I vomited was not motion sickness but the movie we were watching: Top Gun with Tom Cruise, dubbed in Spanish.)

Anyway.

Ávila was beautiful! We took a tour of the old castle/fort (that is also where the bishop lives? So much got lost in translation with my tour guide who spoke Spanish quickly and with a French accent…). Apparently bears are important in Ávila…or else just present in Ávila…at any rate, there was a statue of a bear. (Cut me some slack, I’ve had a terrible cold the past week, and I’d just vomited in front of a busload of other students.) Here are some photos I took of Ávila:

Me, post-puke.

Santa Teresa de Ávila, patron saint

I loved the contrast of the red roofs and the cool blue of the sky and mountains.

The beautiful colors of Ávila!

After eating a lunch of salad, chicken with patatas fritas, and ice cream (served in square pieces and on plates, not in bowls), we made our way to Salamanca. Paige and I shared a room in the hotel, and we were very confused by the way electricity works in Europe; we had to put our hotel key into a slot to turn on the electricity in our room...and if we took it out, the lights would go off.

Note Paige's confused expression.

Saturday, we went on a tour that lasted hours…upon hours…upon hours—six hours in total, to be precise. Of course, everything we saw was breathtakingly beautiful—the paintings in the cathedral, the flickering candles in front of images of Mary and other saints—but after a while, it felt like I had been banging my head against all those beautiful stone buildings for six hours, my head hurt so much from trying to understand all that Spanish! Our guide was andaluza, which is Spanish for “difficult to understand.” Actually, it’s an adjective that describes people from Andelucía, but I stand by my first definition, as people from the South of Spain (such as my host father) tend to talk very quickly. I loved the cathedral in Salamanca, as well as the ancient library of the University of Salamanca. In the cathedral, I found it especially interesting that there were many images of decomposing bodies, a reminder of death and mortality. Also, we got to see the convent where the nuns (called monjas, a false cognate!).

The Plaza Mayor in Salamanca...filled with SO many people, including this group of adorable old people.

There's an astronaut on the front of the cathedral—very unexpected!

Inside the cathedral

There's a frog on the skull in the dead center of this photo at the University of Salamanca...I read on a website after our tour that, if you find the frog on your own without any help, you'll have good luck. As my last name means "bad luck" in German, I of course needed a lot of help finding the frog.

University of Salamanca library? Or Beauty and the Beast library?

View of the cathedral from the courtyard in the nunnery

The University of Salamanca is one of the oldest in Europe, and Salamanca is a very fun place to be with lots of young people. Unfortunately, as I literally could not speak with my cold, I did not make any Spanish friends in some wild night out on the town. Still, Paige and I had ice cream, wine, and dinner (but not in that order) with two very lovely and intelligent girls from the University of Notre Dame. We saw some odd night life; for example, a group of men walked down the street in Elvis costumes and wigs. We also watched a street performer who can best be described as a Gothic, Spanish Charlie Chaplin.

The beautiful streets of Salamanca, with beautiful young people running about!

Sunday, Paige and I got up early just to realize that there’s nothing to do besides go to church Sunday mornings in Spain. We walked by the river in Salamanca, along which there was much graffiti and empty wine boxes (you stay classy, Salamanca!). We stumbled into a Catholic service in the cathedral and stayed until communion (as neither of us is Catholic and thus could not take communion). Also, I joined the UN and flew in a helicopter in the park:

Just kidding about that last part. I’m happy to report that my bus ride home to Toledo went much more smoothly, and I could actually keep my eyes open during the ride (as I took Dramamine beforehand). Spain is SUCH a beautiful country. I saw an old man walking across the plains with his shepherd dog, and the clouds filled with rain made the landscape all the more beautiful.

I promise to be a bit more consistent with my blog updates; my house finally has Internet, so you should hear from me more regularly. Adios for now.