Salamanca

Next contender in exotic stay-over places ☺️

This ancient university town north-west of Madrid was first conquered by the Carthaginians in the 3rd century B.C. It then became a Roman settlement before being ruled by the Moors until the 11th century. The university, one of the oldest in Europe, reached its high point during Salamanca's golden age. The city's historic centre has important Romanesque, Gothic, Moorish, Renaissance and Baroque monuments.

Salamanca hosts some 145,000 residents today.

When we arrived here in the night, the city felt really weird - 30kmh enforced with cameras almost everywhere, wide streets with wide walkways on both sides, and completely empty…

The old town region is blocked for traffic. We spent a lot of time finding the small hotel we had picked - Rúa Salamanca, and then tried to figure out where to park so that the car would still be there in the morning. Found a public parking spot on a street, put in a few coins in the machine and got permission to park until 11:30 next day for appr. 1.5€.
Preferred this over a closer underground parking which was 25€+

The room was very retro in a fun way, almost vintage light switches, brown tones, small barred balcony… but spacious and quiet.

http://www.booking.com/Share-wdEhov

Travel tip:
On our way out of Lisbon I somehow drove into the Via Verde automatic toll billing gate - which are always open and register your magnetic badge if you have it. This meant of course, that I did not have a ticket to present at the next checkpoint 🤪
This little endeavor costs you 45€, when otherwise you would have paid ~20€ for the split (it might simply be a fixed fee for traffic violation). Luckily the dialogue with the highway info staff was short and concrete.
As that was not enough, I also took a wrong exit and drove some 20km both ways to get back en route 🤦‍♂️Read more