Category: Portugal/Spain, Fall 2018

This was supposed to be one of the highlights of our trip, as I had read so many wonderful things about how beautiful Santiago was, so I figured this would be a great spot to spend Christmas. My impression now is they just have better marketing people than some of the smaller towns. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a beautiful spot, but I booked 4 days here based on my reading impressions. Salamanca deserved those 4 days much more than Santiago.

We pretty much did everything on the Trip Advisor Top 10 list on the first evening we arrived. They also don’t have a whole lot of Christmas spirit going on, not even a “big box” light show. Our hotel, the NH Collection, which was supposed to be a “10 minute walk” to the historic part of town, was more like 20 minutes, and not exactly the most beautiful walk either (not to mention it was uphill both ways!). The hotel has a restaurant, but they informed us on check-in that they would not be open for Christmas Eve. They did help us with a reservation at another hotel for dinner that night, and I will get to that shortly.

Santiago is centered around two things. The Cathedral, and the Camino de Santiago, otherwise known as The Way of Saint James. The Camino is a pilgrimage for Catholics, with the final spot being the shrine of the Apostle Saint James, in the Cathedral de Santiago. Tradition has it the remains of Saint James are buried here, but it’s just really good marketing, which lives on to this day. Fortunately the pilgrims don’t have a lot of money, so getting into the Cathedral is free. It is a beautiful church, but I think this is our 30th church on this trip, so it’s starting to get repetitive.

The area behind the main altar reminded us of Trump’s house. It’s also undergoing refurbishment to really shine up all of that gold that stole from the natives in South America.

They did have a cool nativity scene set up inside the church. It was huge, very detail oriented, and had many animatronic controlled figurines.

We entered another church, the San Francisco de Santiago, on Christmas Day. It’s normally closed, but they were having a service so we walked in.

They had the cutest little lambs with the kids near the altar.

So on Christmas Eve, we went to another hotel for dinner, and as Kim mentioned at the time, it felt like we were at a bad wedding reception. The only thing missing was a Bridezilla to throw the bouquet. The food was just ok. The hotel was 4 miles from our hotel, so we took a taxi…no Uber or Lyft in Santiago.

By the time we finished dinner it was 11:00, and we asked the hotel to get us a taxi to go back to our hotel. I was even considering going to Midnight Mass at the Cathedral just to take in the spectacle. The hotel called 3 places….but no taxis…maybe try back in a half hour?

So we walked back to our hotel…..4 miles…..in the middle of the cold cold night. Here is a shot of the freeway when we walked over it. Notice any taxi’s?

On the bright side, it turned out we were on a portion of the Camino de Santiago, so now we can say we are officially pilgrims!

How did I know we were on the Camino? The entire way is littered with these scallop shells. Of course, every store in Santiago sells every variation of a scallop shell you could ever think of. Did I mention these people are excellent at marketing themselves?

Oh yeah, there were also these signs that kind of made it clear…..in case you missed the shells. Marketing baby!

I booked this city as part of our trip simply because I needed a filler city between other stops. Now I’m wishing we had stayed here longer. What a great city! This was definitely one of the highlights of our trip. The city itself is so beautiful, particularly at night when they light everything up.

The main Cathedral of Salamanca was a short walk from our hotel.

We found a nice little restaurant that has a lot of wines by the glass. The very best wines they had, which were quite good, were 6 euros a glass. That includes food! Whenever you order a glass of wine here in Northern Spain, they add food with the wine.

This wine in particular was so good we had to have more than one glass. Didn’t really care for the winery name though.

Every big city in Spain seems to have a Plaza Mayor. This one wasn’t as brilliantly lit up as others we have seen, but it did have this huge gift box in the middle.

A few minutes before 8 this crowd gathered around the box. We weren’t sure what was happening, but as we approached the box it started a light show (complete with Disneyfied music) that went on for about 5 minutes.

It was pretty cool, but I would have still rather seen more Christmas decorations around the square.

We walked around town and found a church that was open, so I of course walked in. There was a service going on, so after much insistence I got Kim to sit down for a little while. At least they didn’t start walking around with a collection plate. As a matter of fact, we saved money, as they normally charge a fee, but it’s free when there is a service. Important fact for future church visits!

We saw this sign on the lawn next to the University. I can only assume they have problems with people urinating on the lawns?

There is an old library attached to the University that has a painted ceiling called the Cielo de Salamanca that depicts the stars and constellations. It was originally painted in the 15th century, and then covered by another ceiling after a fire affected another portion of the building. They discovered this hidden fresco during more current renovations, and have now preserved it.

Spotted this huge Stork’s nest up on the side of one of the churches.

We ran across a free museum dedicated to Venancio Blanco, who just died in February. He was born just outside of Salamanca, and spent his formative years here. We actually liked his art quite a bit, so it was nice to find this little museum tucked away near our hotel.

Chicken!

We even saw one of his statues while out walking around later that evening.

One last night time shot. This is the exterior of the modern art museum. I’ve seen enough modern art to last me a life time, so we didn’t go in. Beautiful exterior though.

I can highly recommend a visit to Salamanca! Our hotel, Hotel Rector, was excellent. Very comfortable, quiet, and the perfect location.