New Cathedral (Catedral Nueva) Salamanca

Caught the bus for Salamanca, a 3 1/2 hour ride on a very nice bus. They had a movie, but only the people in the first row could see or hear it. Then the radio was on playing American & Brit music - Simon & Garfunkel, Cher, Beatles, BeeGees. We left the mountains behind. Around here it is as flat as Illinois. They have farmer fields all …

We arrived at Salamanca in the evening and found our hotel Room Mate Vega easily - thanks to our driver Guclu The Technology Guy ! :) Hotel was really cute! .. I had a room at the penthouse. Not much to see - except the stars - with the ceiling window but gives you a lovely feeling. One more note regarding the hotel : take the information e-mail …

On our exit from Portugal we made a brief stop in Fatima. This place has significant religious importance and the basilica is a very modern building surrounded by a massive square which is filled with people shoulder to shoulder during events across the year. We even witnessed a lady moving down the courtyard on a smooth marble path on her knees as …

... in our times. We kill our own creative thinking :( And now comes the cathedrals : Catedral Nueva and Catedral Vieja. Unlike the other cathedrals, New Cathedral is not built on top of Old Cathedral but both stay and you enter Old Cathedral inside the new ...

... marvelous altarpiece on the inside. The old Ierenimus Cathedral dates back to  around 1060, built from XII to XV, and the New Cathedral from XVI to XVIII. I found the architect drawings on display really interesting, and thought that although we ...

... are storks. We wander along passage ways through rooms until we come out onto a walkway high above the aisle of the new cathedral (the old and new cathedrals are joined together) that’s too high for Shelagh and she retreats back to the roof. As I ...

... buildings. It is right across from the old and new cathedrals, which are incredible. I tried taking pictures of the inside of the new cathedral but it is too big to capture even half the inside in a photo. There is also a patio in the university with a ...

... lunch (2 finals this week – eeekk!) and afterwards I headed over towards the cathedrals.  So far I had only seen the new cathedral, so I wanted to see the old one as well.  Turns out that the tower attached to the old cathedral is the ...

... happy to have made it this far. Took a deep breath and preactically ran back top the hotel. Along the way, I passed the new cathedral and hear two women speaking English. My curiosity got the better of me and I asked them if they knew about the ...

... some of the walls from an earthquake many years ago, and there are parts that were reconstructed after the earthquake.  The new cathedral has a lot of modern architecture in the façade.  There were hidden sculptures of an astronaut and a ...

... city inside the Plaza Mayor surrounded by cafes and bars. The many winding streets took us on a tour of the both the old and new cathedral as well as the university grounds. The vibe in this city is much younger than we had felt elsewhere in Spain. A ...

... although we thought we were churched out we did enjoy having a look about. The cathedral is actually made up of the old cathedral and the new cathedral and we found that you do have to pay to go into the old one which we skipped, instead choosing to ...

Katherine and I decided that since Wake Forest has a program in Salamanca, Spain (about 2.5 hours northwest of Madrid) we should probably go visit sometime this semester but we should wait until we were really homesick to do so...so we went this ...