Excursion with a Friend

Today I had a good time exploring with Gosia, a companion I met last night at the English Language Exchange Club.  She wanted to expand my self-imposed boundaries, so we went into Kazimierz, the old Jewish district.  The Old Synagogue was a good place to learn about Jewish culture, and we both learned quite a lot.  I had no idea that the Krakow Jews had their own version of the YMCA.  It was a sports club named after the Maccabees.  It is very nice to have a Polish native with you to ask questions! By this time, I was hungry, so Gosia showed me the place to get the best zapiekanka in town: the Plac Nowy.  From there, we went to the church of the Corpus Christi, a Gothic-turned-Baroque church that again had...

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Puffer Gets Brave

Things got a little busy yesterday, and we never made a post, so I'm catching it up today.  Readers might get two posts today for bonus!  My exploration of Krakow continued yesterday.  Before I went out to explore, I did some research on places I would like to see in my remaining time here.  I decided to begin the day with the old Town Hall Clock Tower.  It amazes me still that every building I go to see has centuries of rich history.  The Clock Tower has been around in one form or another since at least the 1400s.  It was at one time part of a larger building where the Krakow municipal authorities met.  It's a long way to get to the top, and you have to deal with scary dark, steep, narrow steps: It...

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Back to Kraków

Today we forced an early (well, earlier) wake-up time in order to make re-entry into the normal work-week schedule a little easier.  I don't care if Salamanca and Kraków have the same time on the clocks; they're in different time zones. Laurel and I went to Carrefour today and I had my most successful excursion there.  I'm convinced that none of their employees speak English, but at least I'm figuring out more about how the store works.  For example, as I may have mentioned earlier, the customers weigh and print out a label for their fruit in the produce section rather than the cashier entering it at purchase.  I completely missed this nuance my first time through the store, and no one spoke enough English to explain it...

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Do You Speak Espangolsku?

Today we are traveling back to Poland.  Because it's another day of planes, trains, and autobuses, it's a good time to fill in some of the details of our adventures from yesterday.  We decided to explore the north and west areas of the Old Town this time to see what we could find there.  Old Salamanca is full of churches.  We didn't see any as magnificent as the cathedrals, but the Iglesia del Purisimo (Church of Purity) was noteworthy.  It seemed that other interesting places were inaccessible to tourists, which disappointed us a little.  Instead, we decided to do more souvenir shopping, for which we needed to venture to a different part of town.  Although the typical tourist gift shops are cute, they do...

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Last Whole Day in Spain

It saddens me to write that today was our last day to explore Salamanca and enjoy all that Spain has to offer.  We ventured a little farther out of the Old Town in search of a specially-requested gift for a classmate back home. I'd like to leave readers with observations about the Spanish culture. Although nearly every native Spaniard smokes, I was grateful to see they do not smoke inside buildings.  They probably have some law like we do in Indiana or Ohio. I have never seen so many whole dead animals in one place as I've seen here.  No, I'm not talking about roadkill; these are the markets and meat shops.  Fish, shrimp, and today in the main market, we saw entire piglets.  (Yech!)  To make the yummy fresh sandwiches...

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A Slower Pace

Another great thing about our hotel room is that it has the best light-blocking blinds ever.  Let's just say we slept in this morning.  It looked like it may have been about 6:30 AM, but when the blinds were opened, it was obvious it was not 6:30 AM.  We were not too late for the breakfast buffet, but based on the picked-over selections, we decided to strike out on our own for breakfast.  We followed the hotel concierge's directions toward a grocery, but ended up finding a nice little panaderia (bakery) where we bought some meat- and cheese-filled pastries.  We then enjoyed these on our balcony when we returned to the hotel.  Note: it's hard to avoid cured meats and cheeses at any meal of the day here, but I found...

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Media thus far

Hi there, faithful reader!  Laurel and I have decided to divide and conquer on today's blog post.  My job, in celebration of hotel internet access, is to post various photos and videos taken thus far in our Spanish excursion.  Most of these sites will be described in the preceding entries. Apologies for the delay, but I think uploading all of these last night broke the hotel wifi.  We decided to go to sleep instead, and the wifi is cooperating much better now. Austerity protest in Madrid: Plaza Mayor in Madrid Palacio Real in Madrid Tapas in Barcelona    Sangria! Puffer at the beach in Barcelona Cathedral in Barcelona Plaza Mayor in Barcelona City market in Barcelona: The...

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