As part of our program here we take 3 different weekend excursions to Barcelona, Madrid and Andalusia. Since we have two free weekends our group decided to use our first one to take a trip to Lisboa, Portugal. Only about 4.5 hours from Salamanca this seemed like a great idea. The trip ended up taking more than 6 hours because I later learned that there was a "governor" on the engine that wouldn't allow the driver to go over a certain speed.
On Saturday we decided to take an open air bus around the city so that we could see some of the sights. It proved to be a pretty city with lots of dramatic sculptures and some good views. It also proved to be a city with extremely temperamental, it would go from 70 and sunny to torrential downpour and 50 in a matter of minutes. That made the bus ride all the more fun...
We also had time to catch the Eurovision final, which Rodolfo Chikiculatre unfortunately lost, although his song somehow managed to beat France, Sweden, Poland, Finland, Germany and the UK. I have no idea how.
The trip was great for our group from JMU to get closer and we certainly had plenty of time to do that with the 7 hour bus ride back! I do want it to get warmer here soon, the temperature today is barely pushing 60 and it is raining now! I thought that Spain was some mecca of warm weather, seems I was misinformed.
One of the cool things about Portugal and Spain has been the number of Smart Cars that I have seen in big cities. These are cars which are solely designed to be drive in a big city, and they are for the most part not allowed on out on big roads. The appeal to them is that they use either very little gas or no gas depending on the brand and model you have. They are also extremely maneuverable and can fit almost anywhere for easy parallel parking. Saving energy in general seems to be the norm here in Spain, in restaurants the bathroom lights are only on by motion sensor when someone walks in. Soda bottles are almost all glass bottles which are reused at restaurants. There just seems to be a bigger commitment to taking care of the environment over here (I haven't seen a single Hummer).
Well, that's all I have for now,
adios!
2 comments:
Portugal sounds awesome! I hope you are taking lots of pictures!
Sounds like you are settling into the rhythm of Spainish coulture. I'm glad to hear that you can keep up with the teachers. It was funny, I was playing golf with a business associate and he tells me about his daughters who also went to JMU. This was a few years back and he and his wife go over to visit. They tour Madrid and are heading to the train station for Salamanca. But the train station has just been bombed by Al queda moments before they get there. So they take a bus instead. He is telling me this story and mentions that they took the family his daughter is staying with out to dinner. He said that they had two daughters and lived over a meat market where the father worked. Sound familiar! What a coincidence. Stay out of harms way. Love, Dad
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