Salamanca and Avila

We've been horribly hectic in August- running training, respective hen's/buck's nights, putting things in boxes and roping our kind friends into helping us with the move, paperwork, sending things to Australia and planning the Camino de Santiago... Even though we're on holidays (well, technically unemployed) we haven't had much time to enjoy the freedom.

So we decided to go to Salamanca for a few days. I originally wanted to swing by Leon as well for the free tapas, but we finally decided to go to Avila, an hour and a half by bus from Salamanca. (Photo: view from our hostel room in Salamanca)

People have been telling me since I arrived two years ago that Salamanca was a must-visit place, and I always thought it would be nice to go, but was never too fussed about it until Beza casually mentioned that it's famous for roast piglet.

We bought train tickets on Monday and on the Thursday headed off into piglet country. Aside from the food, Salamanca really is a very attractive city. It has a huge plaza, the oldest university in Spain, which we visited, and a great cathedral amongst other things.

We arrived pretty late in the afternoon, so skipped the sightseeing and headed straight for the 'free' tapas. Basically for between 1.80 and 2.20, you get a beer and a tapa, pretty expensive for the beer alone, but a great price if it includes food. Some of the places give you huge servings- with three beers and tapas, it's hard to fit more in. By Sunday, I was pretty sick of beer; I don't want to know how many litres I'd drunk in three days. (Photo: free massive tortilla rellena)

I suppose we could've ordered proper food, but the prices seemed ridiculously inflated for the raciones, which may have been to compensate for the fact that they give out free food with every beer.

On Friday we woke early and did the touristy things- climb up the tower of the cathedral, look for the frog on the facade of the university building (supposed to be lucky if you find it), cross the Roman bridge and cross back again. For lunch, I'd looked up the best places in Salamanca to have cochinillo (roast piglet) and we rang one up and booked a table. (Photo: gargoyle in the university courtyard)

The piglet was delicious. I almost felt sorry for it, that such a small, pink little animal was ending up all crispy and succulent on my plate. Apparently in Segovia, they chop up the roasted piglet with a plate to show you how tender the flesh is. In some restaurants, they let you decide which part of the piglet you want to eat. I'm glad ours didn't offer us a choice because I would've had trouble deciding.

On Saturday, we headed to Avila, famous for many things. One is its 2.5 km wall that surrounds the village. Another is its saints- Santa Teresa de Jesus, San Juan de la Cruz amongst others. There is also an unproportionate number of churches, basilicas, cathedrals, convents and hermitages for the population of the place. (Photo: wall of Avila)

Here, they also offer the same beer and tapa deal as in Salamanca, but quite a bit cheaper if you head outside of the city walls. The cheapest was 1.40 euros, and we ordered 'patatas inglesas' (English potatoes) which turned out to be chips from a packet.

Avila is also famous for a sweet, yemas de Santa Teresa, which is basically egg yolk mixed with sugar water and rolled in corn starch. There's also a chuleton de Avlia (huge steak, not sure why they claim it's from the region, maybe they produce many cows) which I decided I wanted to try. We shared a 500 gram steak between us and the next morning I could still feel it digesting. I like meat but in small quantities or far between and with the piglet and the cow, I feel like I could leave meatlessly well for the next month or so. (Photos: free tapas of prawns and mussels; chuleton de Avila)

Sunday morning, we visited the convent of Santa Teresa and peered at a lovely relic of her finger, nail still intact and ring attached. We decided to forgo the cathedral because you had to pay 4 euros to enter, and not to climb the walls because the temperature was creeping up to 35 degrees. Had to catch a midday bus to Madrid to catch a connection to Logrono but despite the 6 hours on the buses, I enjoyed our weekend immensely. It's really helped me to disconnect from our half-empty but amazingly messy flat.

Today we had running training and I'm not sure if it was due to all the beer and food we ate, or the 36 degree heat but I really struggled to keep pace.