Sunday in Salamanca

Sunday, May 21, 2017--Salamanca, Spain

We were up so late last night that we slept in a bit this morning and then took our time getting out.  Sundays in Spain are very slow anyway.  All stores are closed.  Tourist sights still close from 13:30 or 14:00 until 16:00. Churches will not let tourists enter because of not wanting them to disturb constant masses.  Etc.

But we still managed to do some things today.  We returned to the Public Library (called the Casa de las Conchas) which is one of the most beautiful buildings in the city.  We had seen the shells and the gargoyles yesterday, but we failed to see the nice Moorish-style stairwell ceilings.  Also, today, we went to its downstairs exhibition area to see a rather simple art exhibit.

When we left the library, we saw that people were entering and leaving the Iglesia de la Clerecia, the church of the Salamanca Pontificia University.  We followed ones going inside to find a huge crowd of people there to celebrate the first communion of a group of young boys and girls.  It gave us a chance to see the beautiful church which is normally only seen on tours and to have fun seeing the children fidget and finally line up to take turns taking communion.

On our way elsewhere, we saw a sign on the exterior of the Holy Hierarch Basil the Great Orthodox Church that they had a piano concert starting at 12:30.  It was 13:15, but the concert was continuing.  We stood just inside the door for a while as a young blind pianist played a long, beautiful, classical piece. 

From there, we went to Hospederia Fonseca and the next-door Capilla del Colegio Arzobispo Fonseca where we saw art exhibits by Miquel Barcelo entitled El Arca de Noe that included films, paintings, and ceramics.  The paintings were the most interesting, and we both commented that some in which he paints horses (here and here) and steers and shapes the canvas into a relief to give it a nice 3-D look would look great on the walls of a Texas ranch house. 

It was 14:00 by that time meaning that nothing would be open.  We stopped by the front of the Edificia Historico de la Universidad to see it and the courtyard in front of it--the original beginnings of the Salamanca University which has just started a year-long celebration to count down to its 800th (!) anniversary next year.  While there, we found the oddity that is popular with everyone--a skull with a frog on top of it.  They think that maybe the frog is there because students thought of it as a good luck symbol 800 years ago.

From there, we walked down to the Roman bridge which is the longest (350 m--about 360 yards) Roman bridge I think I have ever walked across.  The partial bridge I saw in Avignon may have been longer when it existed in its totality, but this bridge actually still does cross the entire river.

We walked by small portion of the remaining walls of Salamanca and by the Convent de Iglesia Esteban on our way back to the room to rest.  Later we walked northward from our hotel and explored the newer parts of the city just outside where the walls used to stand.  We wanted to eat, but it was between dining times in Spain.  Dinner doesn't start until 21:00, and we were so tired that we just stopped to have a sandwich rather than stay out later.