Salamanca! and Joy! and El tigre!

SALAMANCA

Whew. I have barely left my room all day, due to the complete exhaustion I am feeling at the moment.  Friday we left for Salamanca, which is 3 hours away by bus.  The night before some of us went out to a few clubs in Sol, and I ended up getting home around 530.  Not smart.  Nothing really eventful that night except some good dancing and my feet were TORN APART by my heels.  I think i broke my little toe on my left foot, but who knows.

Sooo anyway Friday when we left for Salamanca I was a little tired.  We got to the hotel and immediately walked over to the cathedral and some other noteworthy buildings.  Theres a really beautiful bridge that was built god knows how long ago by the Romans that we had to cross to get into the main part of the city.  It's really weird coming from the US where everything is relatively new and seeing things that are so ancient still in use.  

So we went around and did the whole touristy thing (pics are on facebook), and then went out to dinner as a group.  After dinner (and a few glasses of sangria) we walked around trying to find the Salamancan nighttime district.  Mind you, it was around 1030 at night and we're walking around and there's NOTHING.  So finally we find a club that seems to have a lot of people in it, only to realize that it's some 16 year olds birthday party!  We walked around for at least an hour until we came across this promoter for a club called Atahualpa.  It was a foreigners club or whatever so all the music was in English (bummer) but it was still fun and it only cost 3.50 to get in with an open bar until 2am! So that was nice.  There were probably around 8 of us there, and then we met some Mexicans that really wanted to go to a salsa club (named "El sabor" haha), so we all left to go there.  At this point, it's like 3:30 in the morning.  After going out alllll week I am dead tired.  Buut i decide to stay a little while in the salsa club anyway.  It was fun except I suck at dancing salsa and as such made a fool of myself.  I liked the atmosphere though and the Mexicans we met were super nice.  

Finally at 430 we went home and I crashed immediately.

The next day we got up bright and early (1030ish) and did more of the touristy thing.  We went to the top of the cathedral in town where there is an absolutely spectacular view of the city of Salamanca.  If it hadn't been so effing windy, it would have been a lot more fun, but it was still awesome.  

I really enjoyed the few days we spent in Salamanca, but a few other girls had some bad run ins with the Salamancans.  Although I did like the town a lot, I prefer Madrid and am so happy I am studying in this city.  It's slightly warmer, the neighborhood I live in is extremely safe, the city never sleeps, and the shopping is cheaper!  

SATURDAY NIGHT AKA ABSOLUTE CRAZINESS

So when we got back from Salamanca, I slept for a good 2 hours, and then met the girl that is living in Margarita's house with me.  Her name is Jamie and she's from the Washington University of St. Louis.  She's very nice, and she just left today to go to Ireland so me and Margarita are alone again in the apartment.  Anyways, we had all decided that going out on Saturday night was absolutely necessary (duh), so even though I hadn't gotten any amount of sleep in the past few days I had to suck it up and get ready to go out! Haha, my life is so hard.

We all met at 1130 at El Tigre, which is a tapas bar that is usually so full of people you can't even see your feet.  Seriously, though, it takes a good 15 minutes to get from the door to the back of the bar and it's tiny.  We were there for about an hour and then decided to go because a. everyone was really hot and sweaty b. the drinks were kind of expensive and c. there were so many of us that it was nearly impossible to have any sort of group conversation.

Our next stop was some bar near Sol whose name I seem to have forgotten.  It was a really cool atmosphere, and the music was really good (el canto - or gato ;-) - de loco-esque).  We made friends kind of with the bartender and somehow I got out of paying for my beer there, haha.  Flirting can get you far in this country ;-).

We left that bar around 2-230.  It was time to find a discoteca! We had met some nice peeps at the previous bar that told us about this one place called Joy, so we set off to find it.  Then, the best thing ever happened.  Right as we're about to get into Joy, this one girl corners me and is like..heyyy do you and your friends want to get on my guest list for Joy? You can get in free!...so i was like of course!!!  So we ended up getting into a place that would have costed each of us 15 euro absolutely free! See, mom? I am making economical choices here after all, haha.

We danced for 4 hours.

OMG leaving that place I was soaking and tired but soo happy I love dancing! And it was great with all the girls there! We met people from all over...England, New Jersey, Puerto Rico!  There are some disgustingly sweaty photos from that night, but I'm glad it was documented.  

After we left the club, we decided to get some food.  At this point it was like 630 or so. We went to some random food place which was PACKED (I swear, this city doesn't sleep! 630 isn't even a weird time to still be up!).  We were at that place til 730, met some dominicans, venezuelans, and one brazilian, and then FINALLY went home to sleep.  Today I woke up at 230 for an hour and then again at 745.  Oh man.  I haven't left the house.  But yeah much needed chill day for me.