Marquette University Athletics
Day 4 - Avila and Salamanca, Spain
5/31/2007 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
May 31, 2007
SALAMANCA, Spain - This morning we woke up and began our voyage to Salamanca. We left the Emperador hotel at 10 o'clock in the morning and several of us were not ready to say goodbye to Madrid but at the same time we wanted to experience more of the Spanish culture. Accompanying us to Salamanca was Javier, Hernan's (our tour guide for the last few days) partner. We had a great time with Hernan and could not wait to see what Javier would be like.
On the way we stopped in a city called Avila. Like several other places in Spain, Avila was a town of history. We pulled over and stopped on a hill where were had a great view of the city. Surrounding the city was a great wall that was built years ago. It was called Los Cuatro Pustes which translates into the four walls in English. This was very interesting because it was the only wall left in Spain that had not been broken down. All of the other walls like this were torn down after several wars. Los Cuatro Pustes has been up since the 1100s. This old town was very beautiful. As we were walking around on the streets viewing the different buildings, we stopped into a cathedral. Here we learned that it was a cathedral for St. Teresa. In the cathedral we went into a small chapel where St. Teresa was born. It was nice to be standing in a place where such a respected person was born.
Although viewing the buildings in Avil were very nice, my favorite part was stopping in the candy store. Kelly, coach Jennie, Coach Cara, Krystal and myself were walking around looking for a place to sit down and eat lunch and we saw about seven little kids walking out of the store. We decided to stop in and see what it was like. We did not know what anything was but we wanted to at least experience the culture and try a few things. When I say try a few things, we decided to try one of each cookie or candy on two rows. Each row consisted of at least 10 different things, As soon as we walked outside we began to try them. We had milk chocolate, white chocolate with almonds, cookies, and many other Spanish candies and cookies. Some of them we really enjoyed while others we did not like so much. We tried about five things and then decided we could not eat anymore. We looked at the bag and it still looked full and all started laughing. By this time we had about a half hour left to find some real food to eat and get back on the bus.
When we got back on the bus, we had about an hour left until we reached Salamanca. While we were diligently waiting, we played a name game on the bus to pass time and made the ride go by extremely fast. We arrived to Salamanca, checked into our hotel, and began to tour of the city. This was yet another great city in Spain. Like all of the other places we visited, it was very pretty. We saw several stores in the town that we could not wait to stop in to shop when we had our free time.
We started the tour in Plaza Mayor where were we saw the town hall, the Irish University, and one of the oldest cathedrals in Spain which took over 200 years to build. One thing about the cathedral that a few of us found interesting was that there were graves right there inside the church. As we were walking around we kind of tripped we looked down and saw a bunch of writing. We Asked Javier what it was and he then told us that they were graves. These were the actual graves of bishops right there in the cathedral. This was a common thing until the 1700s where cemeteries outside of the church became the norm. This tour was a little overwhelming because there was so much history to take in. It was a great experience that many of us will never forget.
Now we will be getting ready to go to Portugal in the morning. Jasmine will let you know all about it. Hope you enjoyed the day just as much as we did! See you back in the States!
Adios!
