Aka. "Destination Anywhere", "The Boy and Girl from County Bavaria"... After a very intense year in Würzburg (Germany), I'm back in Salamanca. I probably won't have that many experiences to write, but there's always an excuse to post a new entry!

After all this time here I am again, with a new story to tell. The Easter holiday is already over, but the one I had this year was very special, so I have to tell you all about it. Even though it was not quite what we had planned (we wanted to travel around Spain, but in the end we didn't leave the Province of Salamanca), I have to say that it was great and we both enjoyed it. FIRST STOP: CIUDAD RODRIGO Initially, we wanted to go to Las Arribes (Salamanca) or Gredos (Ávila), but as everything was totally booked out, we decided to ask in the Tourist Office. The ladies there were very kind (and spoke pretty good English!) and gave us a map of the province, as well as a guide with hotels and restaurants from each place. In the end, just for fun, we chose Ciudad Rodrigo, for it was not too far away... and it was the only place in which we found available rooms. But hey, it turned out to be a great choice! The hotel were we stayed was not particularly beautiful, so we only stayed there for one night. We arrived there at midday and had an unbelievably productive day -we saw everything! First we had a quick walk through the old town. I would say the best way to describe Ciudad Rodrigo (or Rodrigo City, as they translated it on some tourist guides :)) is 'a small version of Salamanca, but with more green stuff'. It really suprised me in a nice way. But of course, as it was Easter, we couldn't help stumbling across a religious parade... Marco, who was new to that, made a remark that really touched me: 'I really have to take pics of that, otherwise people won't believe me when I say there were people dressed up as KKK members walking on the streets of Spain. Is it really intentional that they look that scary?' After the parade left the Main Square, we visited the tourist office and had a walk up the city walls. Some time later, it was already lunchtime, so we ate in a restaurant called La Parrilla (their breakfast is really good, as we found out the day after). It's not far away from the Main Square and the prices are reasonable. Regarding the food, it's pretty traditional, but not bad at all. Due to some small misunderstanding, we went for a coffee in the castle, which is now a restaurant and a hotel, hoping to see it from inside. Unfortunately, the only thing we could see was the café. It was nice though, with lots of wood and unbelievably heavy pews. I must mention the medieval outfits of the waitresses. I loved them. During the afternoon, we had time to have another walk around the town and see a photo exhibition. We had seen many cathedrals in our lives, so we agreed to skip this part (after all, who wants to be the stereotypical tourist?) On the other hand, we were interested in the sinagogue, which is nowadays a hospital. Unfortunately, when we found it, we learnt that the only remaining things were a 15m deep well and this floor. As the kind 'cicero' lady explained, it used to be a sinagogue during the 15th and 16th centuries, but was later turned into a church (note: this was one of the first times I played the interpreter, sooooooo exciting!) But the greatest part of the day was still to come. We felt like going for dinner to a fancy place, and we found a good one -a restaurant called Estoril. The atmosphere looked pretty elegant and they seemed to have some good dishes, so we gave it a try. As we went in, we were asked whether we had a reservation. Even though we were cheeky enough to walk in without having one, the employees took pity on us and eventually offered us a table in the non-smoking zone. Nevertheless, they were not that merciful when they found out that we only wanted to share a salad. Our waitress kindly invited us to leave the dining room area and move to the cafeteria, for it would be a terrible effort for them to dedicate us the amount of attention only restaurant customers deserve. As we were sitting there, an unsettling thought struck us... were we being treated as second-class customers? If we already didn't have too much appetite at the beginning (why else would we order just a salad?!), this made us lose the little we had. One good thing I can say about that place is that the toilets were pretty clean (thank god cafeteria customers were also allowed to use them!) I also have to stress that the waitress made quite an effort talking herself out of the situation when we showed our dissatisfaction, claiming that it was a standard procedure and emphasizing that we were not being discriminated against just because we were foreigners. That was quite a relief... On the next day, after the lovely breakfast I mentioned before, we visited some other areas of the town we hadn't visited the day before (well, not that there were many...) until lunch. Then we were planning to meet Puto Antonio, one of our friends there, to go for a coffee or something sweet. We waited for him in the Main Square (the one on the pic, I must say while doing so we had the chance to learn its distribution by hard ;)) and then went to some kind of 5-star hotel beyond the river (we had to walk for around half an hour to get there) which also had a café and a swimming pool. I'm not completely sure, but I think its name was Conde Rodrigo. I didn't really like the bull heads hanging on the walls, but apart from that both the coffee and the sweets we had were very tasty. And, of course, the company and the conversation were just fantastic, and that's all that matters. Then we had to rush back to the bus station to catch the bus back to Salamanca, but on the way we took some nice pics of us. There you go! boony.sosblog.com