Salamanca Provides

We had a long weekend last weekend, so Joaquín and I decided to go somewhere, but he had a conference all day Saturday, so we had to stick close to home.
I ended up taking a train for my friend Steve's house in Avila, to the west of Madrid. I had been to Avila before, but I wanted to hang out with him. It was actually a pretty great visit. We played cards and walked around the town (Avila still has an intact wall surrounding the old city, with some great views), and just caught up. I hadn't seen him in a while, so it was really great.
Joaquín came to pick me up Sunday morning and we drove the rest of the way to Salamanca (another hour away from Madrid). Salamanca, has Spain's oldest university, as well as a dual-cathedral thing going for it. It's a beautiful city.
We got to Salamanca around lunch time, dropped our things off at our airbnb (a ridiculous house on the edge of town) and walked to a street our host said had a lot of bars with tapas. We stopped at an Asturian bar and got Sidra and pinchos (and the bartender poured the Sidra the traditional Asturian way, which, since I've never been to Asturias, I did not know about. It was so cool!).
So we went from lunch to Plaza Mayor (which was scarily reminiscent of the plaza mayor in Madrid... it felt like I was in the same place). We walked around the old part of town for a bit, some of which the streets were covered in sand and hay for the filming of a TV show (Still Star Crossed). It was really cool because it made it seem like we were in medieval times a bit. We went to the cathedral and climbed up the tower, taking pictures of the views along the way.

After that, we walked to see "The Facade." So, because Salamanca University is so old, the main buildings are stone and the facade of the university is renowned throughout Spain. (Recently, I had a class of students try to come up with the 7 Wonders of Spain, and a lot of them wanted to put the Facade on the list). It's famous, but not just because it's a beautiful facade. It's mostly famous for the frog. On one part of the facade, someone carved some skulls and on one of the skulls, there's a frog. It's not there for any reason. It has nothing to do with the rest of the theme of the Facade. But it's there, and it is basically the mascot of Salamanca.

But that isn't even the only weird thing carved into facades in Salamanca. In the facade of the new cathedral, somebody carved an astronaut.

So Salamanca has some weird facade stuff going on.
After we saw the facade, we walked around to find somewhere to get coffee, then we went to this garden. There's a book written entirely as dialogue in 1499 called "La Celestina" or "The Tragicomedy of Calixto and Melibea," and a garden in Salamanca features prominently in the book (it's the place with Calixto and Melibea do the nasty out of wedlock!) Well, it's a very lovely garden, El Huerto de Calixto y Melibea.

After that, we crossed the Roman bridge and looked at the town from across the river, then we walked back and got dinner at "La Mandala."
The next day (Monday, May 2) we checked out of the airbnb and drove to the old town to rent some bikes and bikes around for a while. So this is when the crazy shit went down. We parked the car and started walking to the bike rental place. We saw the vans for filming the tv show and, on a whim, decided to walk over and see if anything interesting was happening. There were a few people around, but we were the only ones not part of the production. Then, a van pulls up and we speculated there were actors inside... and there were! Three actors got out in medieval clothes and then I recognized one of them... it was Giles! Anthony Stewart Head, who played Giles in Buffy and of course I LOVE Buffy. They all started walking into the cathedral and I thought "well, it was cool to have seen him," but then he turned around and walked back to the van. I guess he needed the driver to get something, but either way, Joaquín waved and said "Could we take a picture with you?" He asked us to wait a moment while he talked to the driver, then walked over (like five feet), and we took a picture! I still can't believe it happened!

After that miracle, we rented our bikes and biked around for a couple hours. We biked along the river first, then decided to bike in the country a bit, from Salamanca to a small town 3 kilometers away. It was right in the fields and we saw a herd of sheep, so that was really lovely.

We biked back to the river and ate lunch at a bar on the banks. After that, we returned the bikes, drove back to Avila, and hung out with Steve again before driving the rest of the way back to Madrid. And of course, Clio was very excited when we got back (she was also very curious about my backpack).