Semana Santa- Grandparents

For the second half of my break, I stayed in Salamanca with my grandparents. We met in the Madrid airport, and I took them back to Salamanca, where we checked-in to the hotel, and they got some sleep. The next day, I gave them the grand tour of Salamanca, and we had a coffee date with my señora where I got to play translator. Spain goes a bit crazy for Holy Week (Semana Santa), and there were processions all hours of the day and night, and more people than I've ever seen in the streets of Salamanca. On Thursday, we went to Zamora (I was there before in September), which is well-known for its processions. The processions are sponsored by certain "brotherhoods" who are in charge of carrying certain special statues through the streets. The uniforms they wear are slightly scary looking, and for that reason, the KKK took the inspiration for their robes and masks from the Spanish Catholics (there's a little bit of irony here). Some processions, like the one that ended just before we got to Zamora have women wearing the traditional Spanish headscarf (women during Franco times were required to wear them whenever they left the house), and all of them are accompanied by one or more bands. They also walk really slowly. For the first procession we went to see, we went to the Plaza Mayor, which was listed in the paper as being on the route. We waited for 45 minutes after the time it was supposed to start, and then we started back toward the hotel. We didn't get too far, though, before we ran into the procession, which was blocking our way. When we found it, it was only 5 blocks from where it was supposed to start, and it was an hour after it was supposed to start.
On Friday, we spent the day in Salamanca shopping, which was lucky, because it snowed! It wasn't too bad in Salamanca, except for being crazy cold, but when we went to Madrid the next day, there was a lot of snow along the highway. Our hotel in Madrid was near the airport, so it would have been difficult to get to downtown, and all of the touristy places were closed on Saturday afternoon and Sunday. Fortunately, the mall near our hotel was open, so we had Easter dinner at a buffet with pretty good Spanish food. Monday I went to the airport the Grandma and Grandpa and then came back to Salamanca after a very nice, and (mostly) relaxing break.
The garden near the Facultad de Ciencias with the wisteria arbors. It is a very lovely place to read when it's warm enough.

Coffee Date

A procession

This is the only picture we have from Zamora because we spent most of the time walking around. The flowers were really pretty though.
Snow! In Spain! On the 10th of April (Good Friday)!