Day Eighty Six: The Cathedrals

Today I had my literature class and then went shopping for an hour after class and before everything closes for siesta. It was a very successful hour. Then I went home and rested until lunch, then met up with friends for Black Friday shopping. This time I just walked around with them to kill time before our program was scheduled to meet up to climb the cathedral tower.

In Salamanca, there are two main cathedrals: the old and the new. The old cathedral was built in the 1100’s and the new, I believe, in the 1500’s because the university got so big that the old cathedral wasn’t big enough anymore. To save money, they decided to use one of the walls from the old cathedral for the new one, so the two are connected by a shared wall and both are still used today. Our program paid for us to visit both and climb the tower to overlook the city. This is the inside of the old cathedral. We could only see it from far behind a glass wall up high because tour groups are really loud sometimes. The cascading papers were from a part of the cathedral that held lots of old artifacts and artworks including several visual poetry pieces. This was the first view we got from the cathedrals:

I could see the spot by the river where I normally look up at the cathedrals, so it was really cool to see it the other way around. The river is still probably my favorite place here.

We went into the new cathedral next which is huge, but for some reason the lights were turned off. It was pretty creepy, actually, but there was still enough light to see some of the inside.Then we came back out on the opposite side of the cathedral for more stunning views. We came at dusk on purpose. It was so cold, I couldn’t feel my toes, it was hard to talk, and the stairs hurt our legs more than they should’ve, but it was completely worth it and so stunning.The last thing we did was climb to the bell tower where somehow, the views got even prettier. After that, we waddled like frozen penguins to one of the most iconic cafes in Salamanca where old intellectuals and artists used to go for hot chocolate with churros. It was an awesome and exhausting afternoon, and I was so happy to come home and put on sweatpants and cozy socks. Now I’m going to pack for our AIFS weekend trip to Madrid and Toledo that starts bright and early tomorrow morning! Goodnight, all.