Travelogue

[hudebnik]

A laid-back day in Salamanca. We walked up and down the half-mile main drag(s) a few times, watching the storks that nest at the tops of numerous churches,

stopping for food, returning to the hotel for a nap, looking at more churches,

and other miscellaneous buildings

finding more food, taking the audioguide tour of the cathedrals (Old, i.e. 12-14c, and New, i.e. 16-18c), returning to the hotel for another nap, finding more food, returning to the hotel....
The New Cathedral didn't do much for us: the Gothic arches and ceiling are beautiful, but the decoration closer to floor-level is 17th-19th-century glurge.

But the Old Cathedral is full of 13th-14th-century wall frescoes and carved capitals in pretty good condition



The main altarpiece, made by a couple of Italian painters around 1440, is amazing.



Tomorrow, Zamora (with its several Romanesque churches), possibly Palencia (another Romanesque church), ending up in Burgos. Should still be a reasonably laid-back day, with 3-1/2 hours of driving interspersed with visiting things. Saturday morning we should be able to see the Burgos Textile Museum, then drive to the Madrid airport in the afternoon, check into an airport hotel, and return our rental car before flying out Sunday morning.