The final stop of mine and Mary's road trip adventure was Salamanca, Spain, a beautifully aged university town in northern Spain. We arrived in the afternoon and our blabla car dropped us off in the city center. For the next half hour, we struggled trying to find our hostal. With only an address and no map, this was harder than it sounds! After lots of help from kind civilians, we finally found our lovely habitat for the next couple of days. After settling in and resting for a while (due to our blabla car driver being a crazy driver and Spain not having many direct/paved roads from Zaragoza to Salamanca, we were exhausted) we headed out on the town! We found an area that had quite a few bars, and we ordered ourselves a bucket of beer. Yes, a bucket of beer for only 3 euro-we were already liking Salamanca!

The next morning, we had our extremely crappy breakfast supplied by our hostal and then headed out to explore the entire city in one day. After we finally found the map, we went to a cafe to plan our route. It was a beautiful day and we made the most of it! We went to a jewelry and clothing market (right as they were closing down but we got a good look at it), Plaza Mayor, an ice cream shop (of course), a beautiful convent, climbed towers for a great view of the city, spent way too much time in a tacky tourist shop that we loved, and walked across the Roman Bridge of Salamanca. We timed it perfectly because the storm clouds were rolling in as we finished up at the birdge. Good thing Mary brought her small but mighty umbrella for the walk home! But actually..it was kind of crappy and we got soaked. :)

That night, we met a girl in our hostal and the three of us went to a bar together. She was really cool and was going to be studying in Salamanca for the summer. She was from Montreal, Canada, but spoke English really well so we had a great time together eating nachos, wings, and drinking beer. It was sad to leave her in the morning!

The next day we made our way to Plaza Espana to meet our blabla car driver. We had a ton of difficulty finding him since a race was going on, but luckily he was able to find us and we got into is large -for-a-Spainard's car (Mary and I were NOT complaining) and headed toward Madrid where we would meet up with a connection blabla car to Granada. :) In Madrid, we switched cars, and embarked on our final roadtrip jouney. On the way, we stopped at a super famous restaurant road stop thing that had the most delicous bocadillo I have ever had. Mary and I passed up our cold meat sandwiches in order to eat one because we couldn't resist. After only 4 hours in that blabla car, we arrived in Granada and met up with our apartment rental owners who showed us the way to our apartment.

That night, I shouwed Mary around a little bit and we hit up a couple tapa restaurants together where Mary got to experience her first of many Tinto de Verano! Then we went to the apartment to await Annie, Brandt, and Mom's arrival in the morning. :)