You may have seen on the news that Spain has re-entered a state of emergency, involving closures and curfews and other restrictions. Frankly it doesn't affect me all that much. Things might get a bit tricky if travel bans are imposed between the various Spanish regions. But I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Possibly the wrong choice of metaphor there, seeing as the bridges might be where they put the roadblocks.
This city is one of the great historical centres of human learning. It has the world's third-oldest university, just behind Bologna and Oxford, and just ahead of Cambridge. It's nice and quiet right now, especially when the hour of the siesta combines with the off-season of the tourist trade (and indeed the year of Covid). When you sit in the Plaza Anaya, in the shade of the cathedral and the trees, with a nearby busker playing classical guitar, it's quite difficult to imagine being anywhere else in the world that's quite as pleasant. Salamanca is definitely the highlight of my trip so far.
It's also one of the easier places in Spain for English speakers to pronounce correctly. Having said that, one should remember that the Spanish are more vigilant with their vowels than we are. Each of the four letter 'A's in Salamanca should rhyme with 'hat', contrary to our natural tendency to call it 'Sallermanker'. (The flipside of this is that Spanish people often find it hard to dispense with vowels like we do, for example in English words like 'comfortable'. What most of us actually say is 'comf't'b'l'.)
The excitement stakes remain relatively low here. Having said that, I did chance upon TV cameras in the Plaza Mayor filming the official Spanish version of 'Masterchef'. The locals pronounce the 'ch' in 'chef' with a hard sound, as in 'check', because the 'sh' sound doesn't really exist in standard Spanish. Accordingly, when they want a person or persons to be quiet, they don't say 'sssh' - they say 'ssss', ie they hiss. It's kind of unnerving when lots of people do it at once. But an appropriate note upon which for me to shut up.
 |
| Looking across the Plaza Anaya to the cathedral |
 |
| Close up of the cathedral, with the sun setting in the southwest |
 |
| Iglesia Nueva del Arrabal, on the south side of the river Tormes |
 |
| Plaza Mayor. Sunlight on sandstone is the visual essence of Salamanca. |
 |
| Looking south at the cathedral from the Clerecía towers. It's windy up there. The viewing platforms are not quite level and the railings are a bit lower than I'd like. Vertigo kicks in. |
 |
| Convent of San Esteban |
 |
| Looking north to the cathedral from across the river |
 |
| Surely it was destiny that brought me to this park. |
 |
| Edd vs Food #88 Belatedly it occurs to me that my blog has had something of a savoury bias over the years. So here's a picture of a lemon & mango ice cream smoothie. From the Heladería Umami |
 |
| My Salamanca apartment. I'll take homely chintz over chrome-plated glamour, every time. |
