The beauty of Salamanca

Since I prefer to keep my blog in Chinese, and I can´t write in Chinese at the moment, this will be my last post about Salamanca in English. I will be back to Hong Kong on 8 October and will post in Chinese stories about the city and studying spanish. I have also made a few tours to the neighbouring cities and will write about them too. 

I must say, the city Salamanca itself is really beautiful. It has one of the oldest universities in Europe and the univesisty area has an ambience evocative of Oxford Univesity. The city also boasts many beautiful cathedrals and churches. At dusk, when the architectures of the city are lit by the soft light of sunset, it is magnificient. The city is also at its most beautiful when the many churches and cathedrals are lit by artificial lights at night.

And Salamanca has one of the best preserved and most beautiful plazas (squares) in Europe - its ¨Plaza Mayor¨. I recall that I had the most expensive cafe in my life when I ordered a cup of coffee in Plaza de San Marcos in Venice, Italy, costing me 10 euro (100 hk dollar). In plaza mayor, Salamanca, I paid only 2 euros for a cup of coffee, and you could enjoy nice atmosphere besides nice coffee, seeing the flow of people and life of the city.

It is said that Salamanca ranks second in the world in terms of the number of bars and restaruants in a city. There are many nice bars, cafes and restaurants here. It is a cultural city too. So you can find many arts exhibitions going on. Salamanca seems to have all for a traveller.

However, if you want to study spanish here, there are things you may need to consider. As mentioned in the last post, the people who come here to study spanish are very young. In the past week, a group of secondary students from England arrived in my school (Isla). They are only 16 or 17 years old.

Well, In Isla, there are students not that young (late 20s or above 30), but they are among the minority. Those who are in their 20s are mostly university students. So basically, most of the students in Isla are students themselves.

I will write more about the school (Isla) later, in Chinese, and compare it with the school I attended in Granada (Castila). I hope my observation and some thoughts of mine would be helpful for those considering to study Spanish in Spain.