Carnaval

Spain, being a good Catholic country, has wild drunken parties the days leading up to Lent, and one of the cities known for its Carnaval celebrations conveniently happens to be only an hour away from Salamanca by bus. So, my roommate and some other friends from our program decided to take a day trip there to see the city and see some Carnaval activities.
We left Salamanca at 9 in the morning, and there were 5 buses completely full of people that left then, so it was crazy. Since the city is tiny, and we weren't planning on going to any bars (which were completely full), we had very limited access to free bathrooms, so we decided to use the facilities in the bus station. My experience with bus station bathrooms is that they tend to be lacking, and this one was no exception; it even had sawdust floors.
The first thing we did was orient ourselves, which was very easy, since Ciudad Rodrigo has 6 streets and is a walled city with impressive Renascence defense structures. There is a cathedral that still has battle scars from when Napoleon attacked and the Plaza Mayor, which was converted into a bull ring, but little else. It was a beautiful day, so we spent a lot of time enjoying the sun.
Ciudad Rodrigo is famous for Carnaval because it falls near its saint's day, which means that there are bull fights. Ciudad Rodrigo is also small enough that they still do a lot of the traditional bull fighting "games" like having the bulls run through the streets and having a "capella" which is where all of the brave, macho men in the town can fight the bull. We saw one encierro, where the bull runs though the street chasing all of the stupid people who decide to run in front of it, and part of a capella, but we left before they did anything except taunt the bull.
After our exceptionally cultural morning, we had a nice lunch up on the city walls and spent the afternoon in a market and relaxing in a small, grassy plaza outside the city walls. The bus ride home was interesting, because several of the people on the bus were drunk, noisy Americans, and all of the people I was with and I pretended we weren't American (we didn't speak English) because we were so ashamed of them.
Here are some exciting Ciudad Rodrigo pictures:

The cathedral from near the bus station

Fortified ramparts

The river

There were a lot a bands in the city just walking around playing Spanish music.
In the Plaza Mayor, all of the bands met and had a show down, which ended in them all getting together and taking a picture, and then all of the older people passed the instrument off to some kids, who kept playing while the adults went and got drinks. It's Battle of the Bands Spain style.

They also had a bunch of 20-somethings and teens dressed in bull costumes that chased the kids through the street.

In the Plaza Mayor/ bullring

Silly, macho men taunting the bull. Most of the time, the poor bull could care less what was going on and ignored all of the people.

They also frequently herded cows into the bull ring to get the bulls attention. Like I said, he really wasn't interested in any of the proceedings.

Cannon wounds on the cathedral.

Here are some videos. The first one is one of the bands, the second is little kids getting chased by the fake bulls, and the third is of the bull running into the plaza. While I was making the third video, I forgot that I was taking a video, so there is some nice footage of the back of the person in front of me.