Salamanca

Another weekend away and more happy Katrina!

This weekend i went to Salamanca to visit a great friend from uni who's studying there this year. 7 hours on the bus each way was worth the trip to a city that's very different to Sevilla. It reminded me more of Oxford, being a university town with the oldest university in Spain. It was much colder than Sevilla and the trees showed the signs of autumn. It's a lot smaller than Sevilla, and maybe i would feel claustrophobic living somewhere like that, although at same time when you're only living somewhere for under a year small can be better because it doesn't overwhelm you. And when we walked around we bumped into people Heloise knew. Which is the kind of thing that makes you feel at home.

Anyways we did lots of things that make me smile, with Heloise's friends who are really nice, and from Italy, Germany, Colombia, Venezuela, Belgium... (so some interesting conversations and funny uses of language!). We ate some really good tapas by Plaza Mayor - the central meeting place - including some very interesting tortillas for example one with goat's cheese and jam! We went to a club ('El Sabor') where there was first a couple of Cuban singers performing, and salsa dancing for all. I tried. Tried being the key word. It's more difficult than I expected! haha...

We rested a lot, and played football (yey!!), and cooked, and talked and walked and laughed and drank coffee and had a picnic by the river. Hmm this sounds like a romantic weekend away! no but it was grand. And all those things i much prefer to walking around museums and galleries and checking out builings and being touristy. Sometimes it takes a while to realise that!

But it felt OK to come back too, which is good. The only hard thing is bus journeys give one too much time to think! I did get to see an amazing sunrise on the way and a sunset on the way back though. i didn't really sleep at all either way, so thats a LOT of thoughts. One of them being feeling really small driving through all this big darkness. and how if i wanted to i could get out at one of the stops in a place i've never been before and just walk. and see what happens. and some people do that kind of thing all the time. i couldn't work out if i would or not. sometimes i so want to. and other times practicality takes over. in fact nearly every time. so... then... is freedom a mindset?