Tuesday September 9, 2014

Fiesta in Aleajos carried on well into the early morning.  I didn’t get very much sleep and when the alarm went of at 6:15 am I wanted to turn over and go to sleep.  Unfortunately, the fiesta revelers were still awake and a brass band started up at 6:30 am.  We got up and showered and were on the road by 8:00am.  I was exhausted, I do not do well on little sleep.

However the legs knew what they were supposed to do and they went up and down on those pedals, and eventually the sleep deprived headache disappeared and I began to enjoy the scenery.

It was a lovely ride again.  Plateau lands and on a very quiet road with a wide shoulder.
The scenery is primarily farmland and most of the crops are already off the land.  It looks very dry and barren, but stunning.

As we came into Salamanca, we wondered what all the fuss was about.  The outskirts of the City are very industrialized.  However, when you get into the inner city it is beautiful.  Hector told us about the Albergue’s (Hostels) you can stay in, if you are cycling or walking the Camino de Compestalo.

We figured we had already cycled sections of it and were now going to do another part of the route from Salamanca to Zamora and may be beyond, so we  bought the Camino Pilgrim’s passport which allows you to stay at the Albergues.

We went to the tourist information office who gave us the information on where to buy the “passport” and where the pilgrim’s hostel was.  We could not find the hostel, we went around in circles for about an hour.  We eventually found the YHA and decided to stay there – we got the pilgrim’s rate E16 each per night instead of E22.

We found out if you follow these signs, it directs you to the hostel.

Our room at the YHA would not be ready until 2:00, (it was 12:30) we could come back then and they would let us into our room.  We left our bags at the hostel and had a short wander around the City.  When we went back to the hostel it was locked – with a note saying it was closed from 2:00 until 4:00, I almost went ballistic and I thought Ralf was going to explode as well.  Our bags were inside the hostel, we had paid for the room and now we couldn’t get into it.  Fortunately at about 2:15 a young man showed up with the key and told us that the private rooms were not in the hostel, but in a separate apartment building behind the hostel.  His hand waving and mutterings of where the apartment buildings drove me crazy. I, with gritted teeth asked him for a map.  He looked at me and looked at Ralf and said he would take us to the building, we may have scared him.

After a nice hot shower we both felt a lot better and went back into the old city for a good wander around.  It is a beautiful city with amazing architecture and history.

Salamanca is a walled city, its old city was declared a World UNESCO Site in 1988.  I can understand why.  It is mostly pedestrianized and they have maintained all of the old architecture and very little new building has been allowed inside the walls.

The main square also had a stage set up for more fiesta celebrations.  A band was doing a sound check, glad we are not staying close to this area tonight.

This is the library, we are not sure of the significance of the shells, but a lot of the Camino walkers have a shell on their backpacks.

The Roman bridge has been maintained as a pedestrian bridge.

We had an early night as we have a longer ride tomorrow.