Salamanca

During the Thanksgiving holidays, I caught a plane to Spain to meet Marta. We were staying in Pamplona, but we also visited her parents in San Sebastian before taking a three-day trip to Salamanca.

While I was living in Spain, I visited most of the major and mid-sized cities in Spain. I hadn't made it to Salamanca, though, and I had heard great things. We stayed in a little hostel (sorry, I forget the name, but it wasn't really worthy of either a recommendation nor a warning) just up the hill from the old city.

Salamanca is primarily known for its two historic universities and its lively bar scene. But there is a lot of history in the small city, including a monastery where Christopher Columbus addressed Spain's Catholic kings.

One of those universities is the public Universidad de Salamanca, the oldest in Spain and one of the oldest in Europe. It was founded in 1218 by King Alfonso. The second is the Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, which split off on its own sometime later.

Before you go to Salamanca, everyone who has been there before tells you, You have to find the frog. Being a university city, of course the myth is that finding the frog will give you luck on your next exam. The frog is located on the facade of one of the old university buildings, this they tell you before you go. And it isn't hard to find out which facade, but that still doesn't mean you'll find the frog. The facades throughout Salamanca are amazingly intricate, and this one is intricate to the extreme. Don't worry -- I won't tell you were to find it!

The city's shops are full of frogs -- toys, statues, frog anything you can imagine. The legend of the frog has come to dominate Salamanca's souvenier scene.