Friday, 10 June
We got up reasonably early today – there’s so much to see in Salamanca. From our hotel, it was about a 15 minute walk to the center, and we turned up at the Escuelas Menores just after they opened. This is one of the university’s many intriguing Isabelline Gothic cloisters, and it’s free to visit. We had it to ourselves for a good while, watching the already bright sun illuminate the pale stone and marveling at how hot it already was. We also spent some time, again alone (the other tourists must get up late!), under the ‘Cielo de Salamanca,’ a late 15th-century fresco of the starry, constellationed heavens. This has been moved into a darkened chamber for preservation, giving a much more modern observatory feel. It used to adorn a university library ceiling and is very lovely – but no photos allowed!
After a quick coffee and blogging stop, we lugged our increasingly boiling selves to the indoor market, all Art Deco glass and metal. We purchased some of the most affordable looking jamón iberico de bellota (time to see what all the acorn fuss is about) and some olives – we’re loving the bitter blueish green ones. We also saw some incredibly gory meat offerings: flayed calves’ heads with the eyes still in, whole piglets piled high, rows of noses and ears, and more. They seemed to fit in well with the faded red writing to be seen all over Salamanca, and which inspired the ‘Salamanca’ font all stores in the old town are required to use for their signs. This writing is paint made of bull’s blood: the students of old would paint their name and an intricate ‘Victor’ sign on a wall when they graduated. And yes, that blood did (apparently) come from student bullfights!
The heat was mounting, and we were glad to have a restaurant booked for a cool lunch inside. I’d found a very good value ‘Menú Ejecutivo’ (a menú del día by any other name would taste as good) in the restaurant of a hotel attached to an old Benedictine monastery. Alfie and I settled ourselves gingerly at our pristine table – in our hiking gear, we looked like executives of forest ranging, if anything!
Los Menús
Primo: Coca de verduras with pistachio dressing and salad (Alfie); Menéas or silky pimentón-spiced mashed potatoes in a clay bowl topped with shards of pork (Bea).
Segundo: Two small melt-in-the-mouth bits of pig cheek atop vanillaed merlot-stewed pears for both (it’s interesting how the second course is often smaller here).
Postre: Chocolate mousse that went excellently with the coffee (Bea); Deconstructed carrot cake (Alfie).
The desserts were the only section to let down the Spanish side, in the sense that they were not obviously Spanish (even the bread rolls were totally stale!). However, they were perfectly nice. The meal came with a glass of wine each (these were good but didn’t taste Spanish), fancily filtered water, and an unfortunately rancid-tasting amuse-bouche at the end. Based on this mixed if enjoyable experience, we decided that, most often, one well-made wholesome dish is all you need. Indeed, our dinner at a dive-y looking beer bar ended up pipping this lunch squarely to the post…
After lunch, we went around the cathedral. Or cathedrals, as the case may be: Salamanca has two, though they are connected. The older 12th-century cathedral was eventually outgrown and replaced with a bigger early modern one. We didn’t linger long in the latter, which was just as well, as there was plenty in the former to enchant us. We’d never seen so many well-preserved medieval wall paintings! Or so many different ones, anyway, given our visit to St Isidore in León.
Eventually, we started to hate the sight of interesting medieval artifacts. Utterly wiped out, we sat ourselves in a small park with a fountain, nearly jumping in. Then, needing a toilet (public toilets sadly seem to be nonexistent in the parts of Spain we’ve visited), we ended up at the public library, which is housed in the magnificent ‘House of Shells’. Some people in traditional dress were setting up on a stage in the very Salamanca-esque courtyard, and there were several rows of chairs lined up under the open sky. A quick Google told us this was a free folk music event, and we were quick to sit ourselves down in two of the rapidly filling chairs.
Four women and two men in Salamancan traditional dress proceeded to perform for about an hour. The man in the middle, the leader, was singing and playing a shrill bird-like flute held in one hand (he began the performance with a very beautiful solo on this flute), while playing a strident drum with the other. The women next to him was singing along with him occasionally, though never in harmony, while playing very quiet cylindrical bell. The rest were dancing in couples, and the other man played castanets as he danced.
This was the set-up – the music was like nothing I’d heard. Melodically, it had a Moroccan or Arabic vibe, with very flat notes in the strange scales that were almost addictive to listen out for. The frenetic rhythms from the drum and castanets, which cut across the melody lines of the singing in interesting ways, were contrasted with the dancers’ stillness: as they stood across from each other, arms raised but never touching, they were nearly motionless, only moving their feet in various patterns.
I understood almost nothing of the poetic-sounding commentary the leader interspersed between the songs in incredibly fast Spanish. At one point I think he said that he had been a student in Salamanca. At another point he seemed to be worried (quite unnecessarily) that it was going to rain. I caught that a few of the songs seemed to be love letters to the city or to people. Every so often, one of the performers would ask a leading question of the audience, and everyone would answer ‘Si!’ or ‘Salamanca!’, or whatever the obvious answer was, and laugh. Alfie and I laughed along with them bemusedly.
Congratulating ourselves heartily for having happened upon this excellent insight into Salamancan folclore by chance, we wound our way back to the north of the city, where we were staying. Suddenly hungry, we took a chance on a rather all-encompassing ‘craft beer bar’ that had a Scottish title, American vibes and German, Spanish and UK offerings. We tried a cider from Galicia, which was pleasingly funky, and a few tapas of meatstuffs (what else is there?) we hadn’t tried yet. Alfie loved the tiny burger made from the meat of the local breed of black cow and the almost blue-cheesey slab of pork fat, whereas I flavoured the grilled garlicky pork that must have been called lágrimas because it makes you sad it’s so good and the local sausage flavoured with anise.
As we perched at a high table by the side of a road bustling with tapas-goers and enjoyed the cool evening breeze, we decided it had been a great – if ridiculously full – day.
– Bea
You guys are having an amazing time! What a wonderful experience! You could also pass as brother and sister. Cute couple! Stay safe and enjoy this adventure!