Salamanca

It was my first day travelling alone. I've travelled quite a bit in the past but it has always been with Fi or friends or both. I felt a mixture of excitement and anxiousness. I wasn't anxious about what could happen to me, I wasn't exactly going to be kidnapped and have my head chopped on the internet. But, I didn't exactly know what to expect from my own company. People say they travel to find themselves. What if I found myself and I was the most boring guy ever? Even worse, I would have no escape - I couldn't exactly pretend to myself I had to take a call, or that I was meeting somebody later so I better go.

But, when I did eventually find him, I realised that he wasn't so much boring as just lazy. Without Fi to nudge me in the morning telling me we need to go out and make the most of the day, I ended up sleeping in, a lot. I was always the last one to bed and the last up. Me and my new found 'inner Jake' even almost decided to give the cathedral a miss because we couldn't take our beer in. We did go, in the end on the promise of another beer when we got back out.

It's a Salamancan tradition to spot two modern sculptures amongst the medieval architecture. One is an astronaut carved in to the cathedral and the other is a frog. The frog being the hardest out of the two to spot. Inner Jake and I stood there for twenty minutes, squinting at the ridiculously intricate architecture looking for this blasted amphibian. We tried everything. We followed a stranger's fingers pointing at the door, but she was old and her fingers were crooked. We glanced at the back of cameras to see the display, trying to match it up with the door frame. We moved around to get a different angle. I asked inner Jake if he wanted to go but he said that he thought we should stay. I was starting to like him less and less. I had a dry tongue and needed a beer before we met up with Laura (a friend form la Rochelle). We glanced back to the right and saw what we thought was something in the shape of a frog's leg. "That was probably it". I said to Inner Jake, "Come one let's go get another beer".

Later on I had company again, I met up with Laura, who I have to thank for a really intricate tour of Salamanca. As intricate as you could get in a day, but not as intricate as the door with the frog. That was too intricate. Tradition dictates that if as student spots the frog then they'll pass their exams that year. Good job I don't have any exams.