Trip to Salamanca

Last weekend, the international student group on campus organized a trip to Salamanca. Over 100 students loaded up the buses to make the two and half hour drive to the city of 160,000. One of the most famous sights of the city (besides the Cathedral) is the University of Salamanca. It’s about 600 years old…so, at 125 years old, Marquette is just a young pup! The whole group had to stop and stare at the outside of the university because there is a legend related to getting good grades. There is a frog on the façade of one of the buildings and if a student can spot it without any help, he or she won’t have to study and will get good grades. No one could find it but that’s not surprising since it looks like a bird! Our guide said we didn’t have to worry since we’re all exchange students we won’t be studying anyways!

We also saw the House of Shells-which is adorned with conch shells and was supposedly built by a man as an expression of love for his wife (or something of that nature…all the facts and dates start to run together after hours of touring).

By the second day, some of us decided we wanted to do a tapas tours instead, so we broke off from the group and spent the afternoon/evening/night hopping from bar to bar. I even tried morcilla, which is blood sausage. It is made of blood, rice and something else…can’t remember, but I thought it was actually tasty. So far, Salamanca has had some of the best tapas in Spain.