Frog & Bull Hunting

Returning to Spain, we made a whirlwind visit to Salamanca & Madrid. Salamanca is a beautiful old city with reputedly some of the country’s best examples of Plateresque, Churrigueresque & Spanish Gothic buildings, which being an expert on Plateresque & Churrigueresque architecture and all, was immediately apparent. One such building was the impressive cathedral nueva which took 220 years to complete. Another was the university, where we spent a good 30minutes gazing at its façade trying to locate a tiny stone frog in amongst the mass of ornate sculptures & carvings. Legend says that those who discover the frog will have good luck in studies, life & love (and lets face it, who wouldn’t want some of that). Unfortunately for myself, I’m not so sure it still applies if you require an old man to locate it for you.

Our biggest mistake in going to Madrid was to spend only 2 days there. Our second biggest mistake was to sleep in on the first day there. We eventually managed to get to the art museum which had a marvellous Picasso exhibit on. We managed to spend over 3hrs admiring his masterful works, and those whom he was inspired by. By the time we got out everything was closed for siesta and meant we wouldn’t get to see the other galleries on our to do list, so instead we went to another bullfight. For this fight it was the junior competition so our expectations weren’t great, but we were pleasantly suprissed to find that the matadors & bulls were far better than those we saw in Pamplona. The winning matador was a spring chicken at 17 (just ripe for picking according to Marge) and was awarded 2 pigs ears from the judges for his bull fighting skills.

Taking on a horse. These challenges were amazin.




















Never a doubt that this would be the end result. Poor bugger.