Salamanca - City of Dreams

Salamanca is the Cambridge of Spain. Majestic university buildings dominate the old part of town, and have done since the twelfth century, apart from a short period when the Spanish Inquisition unexpectedly reduced student numbers by torturing the lecturers (don't tell the DES) and banning maths and medicine because they were anti-christian. Not until the inroduction of the National Curriculum was this level of interference with freedom of academics seen again.

Today there are more than 100,000 students at the university, many of them from outside Spain, and the proliferation of quality low-cost food outlets should of course be a response to such an a sizeable and discriminating market... nevertheless Burger King and Macdonalds have established a foothold, (where is the Inquisition when you need it?) although they are not allowed in the Plaza Mayor - a magnificent and well preserved cloistered square, and strictly the preserve of high-cost low quality Spanish food outlets. Unfortunately, the main university building, where we could have seen the ancient lecture rooms where many original scientific and mathematical theories were first debated before being accepted throughout the world, was closed for re-furbishment. Once more our attempts to absorb a bit of culture and wisdom are thwarted and we are forced instead to find a bar...

Right by our hotel (a good choice if I may say so, the Catalonia Salamanca Plaza, just behind the Plaza Mayor but not facing onto it) is a small bar La Dehesa - translation: a pigless oak forest. Not a pigless bar however, nor a fishless, eggless one either. Tortilla not bad (contains potatoes although a little more olive oil wouldn't have hurt) but the silver medal goes to the "tapa de bacalao ahumado con queso filadelfia" - a triumph of cross-cultural gastronomy. A thick layer of smoked cod (think of smoked salmon that's white and tastes of cod) smothers a thin scrape of cream cheese. I may be wrong about this, but I think the term "filadelfia" is used in Spain to refer to cream cheese of the type in general. In tapas bars it is often used to effect when spread on bread under an oily topping (smoked fish or anchovies, for example) - it prevents the oil soaking into the bread, which would leave the topping dry. Anyway the point is the topping is the important part and the smoked cod was delicious - definitely the new smoked salmon.

Our first evening in Salamanca was not a great success. In an effort to avoid both low quality and high prices, we wander down a street - San Pablo - where our Rough Guide has identified a number of bars and restaurants as worth visiting. We're in the habit of using the guide not for its specific recommendations but to identify the general drinking/eating areas in a city. Bars and restaurants in most towns and cities do tend to cluster together - there's an old maxim that the best place to open a restaurant is next to a good restaurant - a phenomenon that's recognised almost everywhere, except Swindon. However in Salamanca this tactic failed - most of the places on the street were either closed for the holidays (a risk in July or August) or not worth the detour off the pavement. We tried 3, all pretty dire, but the most shameful being a trendy modern place called MOMO - listed, no less, in La Guia Michelin 2009, with a decent (but not cheap) list of wines by the glass, but with such a shocking-looking display of stale, curling tapas of the neither tasty nor ornamental variety, that we could only assume that the tapas they put out the day the Michelin Man called went down such a storm that they had decided to leave them there for the rest of the year. Nevertheless a small glass and a little more bacalao ahumada in La Dehesa finished the night in style.

It may be that the smoked cod accounts for Shareen's dream that night, who knows, but interpret this if you dare... She actually woke up giggling uncontrollably, tears of mirth running down her face as she described the dream thus:

"We took Florence and Patrick back to university, where they were sharing the same house with a bunch of others. Phil immediately set to fixing all the equipment in the kitchen which was broken, and I to cleaning it. I went upstairs to find that Florence had unpacked all her belongings and made her room her own - just like when she was about 5, with her printed duvet cover and teddies etc all laid out. Her bottom sheet was torn in shreds however, so I decided I would just pop to Tesco's to buy her a new one. Phil wanted the car to go and buy some electrical parts to fix something, so one of the other students in the house said I could borrow hers. She explained that, in order to save money, the car had been adapted so it would run on milk, and she gave me a tiny little jug of milk to put in it.

Unfortunately the car was parked behind a barrier, now closed, but this was no problem to me, I just got out and lifted the car over the barrier. However, in the process I inadvertently spilled the jug of milk, much to the amusement of the three large dogs who were watching me. (Normally I am terrified of large dogs - these were a St. Bernard, a Great Dane and one of those other huge horse/wolf cross-breeds, but I wasn't frightened of them at all.) They were just quiely tut-tutting amongst themselves about how I'd spilt the milk, and now the car wouldn't go anywhere.

Undaunted, I went and knocked on the door of a nearby university building, which was opened by a smartly uniformed female naval officer, from whom I requested the loan of a cup of milk. With a dismissive gesture, she referred me to a bearded Captain at the other end of the room (the room was full of them all sitting round a big table having a meeting) indicating that lending cups of milk was his job. He went to get said milk, and meanwhile one of the other officers decided I should be questioned while I waited. "I bet you can't answer this," he roared, laughing and nudging his fellow admirals, "Which motorway runs through Nottingham?" Confidently and without hesitation I replied "the M6," which response he judged to be accurate, declaring that I was not so stupid as I looked. At this point, my younger sister Nuala appeared, not with a cup of milk, but a cup of soup. "The captain thought you'd prefer this," she announced, "it's so cold outside." "But," I whined in ungrateful protest, "my car doesn't run on soup, it runs on milk..." at which point the absurdity of my position became clear enough to wake me up.