‘La Sierra de Francia – this is one of the must see beauty spots in Salamanca Spain, located particularly on the southwest of the town, you would never regret of visiting this place because it really has a captivating villages and impressive natural surroundings. One of the villages that could be found here is the La Alberca which was designated in 1940 as a national heritage and a good example of the distinctive small village which can be found in the heart of Spain.

Bejar Village – another fascinating site to see in Salamanca, located in the south of the town. The village offers the travelers a captivating views or sights that would surely capture their hearts. It is in the village of Bejar where the oldest bullfighting ring all over Spain is found. It is in this village as well where tourists can find the historical 17th century Ducal Palace which is until now remains as a Moorish fortress.

Ciudad Rodrigo – this is located on the east of Salamanca which is considered as the second biggest town in Salamanca. Ciudad Rodrigo offers various interesting monuments which were emerged from the different eras. Some of these monuments are the 16th century town hall, the Palace de Mocterzuma, the Castle of Enrique II and the 15th century Cathedral.

Salamanca is an amazing tourist destination and it would be great if you can visit to some of these interesting beauty spots of the town.

The Lagun Air services the tourists in Salamanca. It has daily flight from Malaga and Barcelona. Buses and train links are also available going in and out Salamanca. I wouldn’t say that Salamanca is just another great city to visit because for me Salamanca is ONE very special tourist destination to visit.

All of Salamanca’s tourist attraction can be visited by foot. All of these must-see tourist attractions are so close to one another that you can just walk from one great attraction to another. The Old and New Cathedral, The University, House of Shells and the Roman Bridge and of course the Plaza Mayor are the tourists destinations in Salamanca. And I have seen it in all in its splendor, history and magical beauty.

I thought that seeing Salamanca’s architecture in broad daylight is already enough and that’s it! Yet the setting of the sun brought another perspective for Salamanca’s building. The ray of the sun give Salamanca’s building a golden glow as if by magic. The building is slowly turning into a glowing structure right in front of your eyes- the colors pink, orange and gold are glowing and dancing right in front of your eyes. I was so enchanted and amazed that I almost had forgotten to take a shot on it.

Salamanca’s nickname “La Dorada” which means golden City is really given justice by this phenomenon. This is for the fact that the buildings are made of sandstone mined and gotten from Villamayor quarry. The glowing quality of the stones is indeed appreciated with the setting of the sun.

Still carrying the wonderful experience of the sandstone-made building I directly went to Plaza mayor to again meet another set of magic. Few people- I think some are student- is joyfully singing Spanish songs right in the middle and corners of Plaza mayor. Plaza mayor is full of restaurants and eating places to choose from plus the singing choir of different crowd of people. The strings of the guitar would really touch a cord in your heart that would make you remember home. Oh my, I am nostalgic! A superb way to end a day of tour!

One really good day in Salamanca! A magic that I would never forget! A tour that heals one soul! Salamanca is simply magical.

Salamanca is known to have a very attractive place to visit, cultural values, and a pleasure place for night life, conducive place for learning a bit of Spanish and their recreational activities offered.

Since tourism is the primary economic activity in the city, Salamanca is a popular tourist destination especially in summer days. In the year 2002, Salamanca is awarded with the title of European Capital of Culture in Bruges.

Salamanca’s inhabitants are said to be the purest speaking Spanish in Spain for that reason it is popular with people all over the world who want to learn Spanish. It said to be the best place for vacation and practicing sports. Among the most popular sport activity practiced is Golf because of its perfect weather and considered to be the best golf courses in Europe.

If you love to explore the beauty of Salamanca then be adventurous with its nature and be fascinated with many mountains surrounds making it a perfect place of rock climbing, trekking or mountain biking. You can find some of their perfect venue for practicing favorite sports here in Salamanca, there are Club Actividades de Montaa de Salamanca, Grupo Universitario de Montaa, and Asociacin de Escalada Tablom.

For tourist who are looking for more traditional sport activities such as soccer, tennis and squash it is also available here in Salamanca.

For Air Sports try Aero- Salamanca Club the Salamanca’s best venue for practice. Try also Salamanca Golf Club and Villa Mayor Golf where you can enjoy your favorite sport at the same time feel comfortable with their place.

For Water Sports try Piscinas de Garido, Piscina de la Alamedilla and Public Swimming Pool where they offer the best way to enjoy sports while you are in the water.

Salamanca is much more than the beach tourism and people coming to enjoy the relaxing environment the fact that most of the tourist came after to enjoy both vacation and practicing their favorite sport.

• Garamond—it is the favorite place of the luxurious Spaniards for relaxation. This disco bar features sports a classy medieval ornaments as well as strict dress code. Its operating hours starts from Sun-Thu 6pm-3:30am and Fri-Sat 6pm-4:30am.

• Teatriz—this trendy bar café is one of the most visited and famous bars in Salamanca. Its previous originality is a theatre which became now as a fashionable bar café. Its unique avant-garde design and traditional architecture give an artsy and diverse atmosphere and attracts numerous night goers both local and tourists. It houses two bars; comfy and smug, and spacious and velvety. This bar café is open all day.

• Gabana—one of the most famous disco pub in Salamanca that implements strict dress code. The music mostly played here are pop and Top 40 music that allures various crowd that includes famous and wealthy. This disco pub as well is best described by many as “Hot and Happening”.

• Balmoral—this bar is featured by the Newsweek magazine as one of the best bars all over the world. It features the style of stag heads and stuffed grouse. Night goers here can witness the most famous 100+ cocktails that include Bullet Shot and Bloody Mary and Balmoral. Its opening hours starts from Mon-Sat 12:30pm-3:00pm, 7pm-2:30am.

• Bar Independencia—this bar is most popular amongst the young professional nightlife lovers. This is a two-room bar with an old-fashioned or an old-fashioned as a disco can be. It features music from the Spanish oldie hits to Top 40 tunes.

Another great place to socialise in Salamanca and enjoy a glamorous night is the casino. Popular with tourists to the city (the Germans who like to play pokern for example) and so has a real cosmopolitan, exciting feel to it. A truely glam night out!

The United States is currently in the brink of recession. On the other hand, European countries such as Spain are making sure they will not be heading that way. You too can surely help dealing with that by spending. Vacationing to one country in Europe like Spain is one way to help. By reserving a flight alone through online travel agency Expedia, you will be dumping bucks for the American economy because Expedia is based in the United States.

When you board an Iberian Airlines flight bound for Madrid, you will then help the Spanish economy. If you take the Eurostar from Madrid to Salamanca, part of what you’ve spent goes to the economy of the United Kingdom because Eurostar is a British company operating in mainland Europe.

Salamanca is the most Americanized city in Spain (many students can fund long stays by giving one to one English class to local “salmantino” students). That is why I want Americans to go there and not elsewhere in the country. Salamanca was even the set of the upcoming Hollywood movie Vantage Point starring Matthew Fox of Lost and an ensemble cast of very talented actors such as William Hurt, Forest Whitaker and Sigourney Weaver including that hunk who has two infant twins, Dennis Quaid. Because of this fact, employees in the hospitality sector in Salamanca can speak American English or the one with the rhotic accent. They are very professional and courteous because they are trained by Swiss hospitality universities and colleges.

But if you want to acquire Spanish as a second language, there are also lots of language institutions in Salamanca. When you do that, you can contribute to the economy in Salamanca already. It is not just tourism though that Salamanca is relying on. There are also tungsten mines there. For 2008 alone, Ormonde Mining PLC has spotted five more tungsten deposit sites in Salamanca. Ormonde Mining PLC estimates that there are around 5 million tons of tungsten deposit in Salamanca. This can surely buoy up the economy of the country whose central bank, the Bank of Spain, in conjunction with the European Central Bank, Prime Minister Zapatero and his counterparts at the World Economic Forum in Davos have already been panicking because of the stock market run in the United States.

Money is often a very important factor to all the students who study here - many have part time jobs whilst as a student and can forget things like they are sometimes entitled to taxback should they be in full time education - something which, although Salamanca is a relatively cheap city, when compared to Madrid for example, is always welcome!

Now let’s talk about foreign affairs. Salamanca has just established its sisterhood ties with Tehran. Tehran is one fascinating city. In fact, its former mayor who is now president of the country, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has been nominated as the world’s best mayor during his reign.

Aside from enjoying the beauty of Christmas here in Salamanca, have fun in other endeavors as well. For example, you can enjoy having to learn Spanish right here in Salamanca. There are numerous schools right here splashed in the middle of Salamanca which offers two-week short courses in Spanish. Here, you can learn Spanish the fun way. The lessons are not induced in boring lectures but all in a participative mood.

The tutors make use of slides where you can recite out loud the few vocabularies that you have learned so far during the course. Make no mistake, the Spanish crash course here is already included in bundled tour packages during Christmas so you will be toured with the many attractions in Salamanca as well.

And in Salamanca, even though it is not located in the Mediterranean, there are numerous swimming pools here to have a perfect romantic vacation. Since Salamanca is located in the middle of a hot city with so many Moorish-inspired buildings, it is not that cold here during winter so this vacation can really be a pleasurable one.

You can have a romantic evening with your partner or if you have a kid in tow, you can put your kid at one of the nurseries in the hotel that you are staying. Salamanca offers a varied selection of five-star hotels and inns. These inns have newly-installed nurseries, an addition that has been the trend recently following the Madeleine McCann kidnapping in nearby Portugal. And get this folks – these nurseries are all manned by professional child psychologists so your stay will definitely be a pleasant one and you need not worry about your child’s welfare because these nurseries are operating 24 hours.

With this freedom in mind- do something you’ve never tried before! Salamanca has a very prestigious casino to be enjoyed and what better excuse to experience the glamour of the poker tables than a holiday? You needn’t spend too much once inside but you should plan in advance how much you are prepared to lose - you don’t want to be struggling come the end of your holiday! Of course, your luck could go the other way and you may find yourself with enough to finance another city break! Give yourself the best chances by practising poker online before you come away - you’ll make the most of your Ocean’s 11 experience and feel a lot more confident on entering Salamanca’s extravagant secret!

Binge on some of the best Salamanca food at the topmost restaurants here. After all, these restaurants are regularly checked by the Salamanca tourism ministry because they don’t want to feel embarrassed with poor service. Tourism is one of the lifeblood of their economy here. There are lots of yummy treats available in the Salamanca way like several variants of the famed Spanish staple tortilla, chorizo and the fish. How can anybody forget how tasty the fish here is? Fish here is sautéed, fried and grilled the Mediterranean way – in olive oil.

In fact, you can even order fish right from the aquarium before they are cooked in various forms - monkfish, salmon and king prawns bundled in one salad; sautéed langoustinos in garlic sauce (hmm…yummy), king prawns marinated in chili (get that?); seafood salad with marinated octopus, squid and mussels; oysters dipped in lime; lobsters dipped in tartar sauce; and everything else in between.

The city of Salamanca is a plateau and is considered one of the Renaissance cities in Europe. For this, Salamanca as a whole is instituted by the UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. As winter is approaching, many visitors from Britain are slowly going to Salamanca. There are lots of visitors during summer but undeniably, there are a few who want to go back here during winter even though the temperature is as cold as their home country and may likely go down a little more than -3 degrees Celsius. That’s one thing why winter is savored by tourists here. They want to stroll around the nice spots of the city without the rowdy crowds of summer. Think of something like a second honeymoon if you may.

And it’s nice to be out here in Salamanca to celebrate Christmas. After all, most companies in Great Britain and all of the United Kingdom give Christmas breaks to all their employees. It’s nice to bring one’s family here in Salamanca, lodge at some three- or two-star hotel and be present at every mass during the nine dawns preceding Christmas Eve. The folks here are highly religious and they can surely appreciate a foreign family diligently going to mass. That’s it if you’re Catholic though. But if you’re not, then merely marvel at the cathedral and other smaller churches here and it’s some sort of spirituality already. Speaking of churches, theirs in Salamanca is designed as Gothic. This was duly part of the Catholic’s desire to convert the natives into Christianity back then and to do that, they have to incorporate designs in the physical structure of the church which reflects the dominant culture among the locals. When the churches were overrun by the Moors, they were converted into mosques and integrated with Islamic designs in the interiors. These were then retained when the Christians reconquered Salamanca back.

Another plus factor when you’re out here during winter is that hotels and motels here are not fully booked. You don’t need to have that hassle going in and reserving for motel suites at a month’s advance. All the motels here are nicely kept, even the smallest ones. They all abide by the European Union standard.

Since the city of Salamanca is in the inner part of the country it is hard for every tourist to land with it. However, because of the innovative way of reaching the place through the Valladolid airport that offers Air France and Ryanair; recently Salamanca could easily be reach with only one hour from the airport. The city of Salamanca has a huge collection and full of façade with its historical sceneries; and it is the main reason why the place is rushed by tourists worldwide annually. And in fact, the city of Salamanca is one of the most captivating and beautiful cities within the cities of Spain. It is also in Salamanca which is very popular city of students wanting to learn Spanish language.

Aside from its vast collection of historical heritage, there are more views to discover and go about Salamanca. If you are already here in the place don’t waste time of going to the city of Bejar. With only 14, 000 folks living and abound with mountains and landscapes knowingly called as “Sierra de Bejar” is mostly the meeting arena of the nature lovers. The façade it has is actually one reason why the place smells good with the tourists. While you were in Bejar, you cannot miss to visit its “Palacio Ducal” or the palace of the Dukes of the city. Since Bejar also offers many monuments to visit and discover you will surely love the idea of landing the place. In lined with those panoramic sceneries is the oldest bullfighting ring in Spain ventured since 1711.

Aside from the beautiful places to discover and enjoy about Salamanca, there are also things you can do and of course also enjoy while you were still staying in the city. Since the city has a medium size, it has a big capital with bounty of leisure amenities; and it has partly calm and lively areas. You can wander with its huge and peaceful streets which has remarks from its historical past. Or perhaps you can enjoy mingling with the Salamanca folks with its lively and vibrant walks of life. Despite its medium size and quite historical façade; the city of Salamanca presence something like cafes, terraces and discos and more which you will love the most. And in fact, nightlife in Salamanca is one of the assets of the city. There are more to delve and discover about Salamanca, and it will be more benefiting if you will discover it too.

To any sane tourist, his or her best weapon is food and water. Without food and water, one cannot survive traveling of course. And in traveling to such places as Salamanca, one can say that food is not a problem. Since Salamanca has its own share of prolific agricultural produce, it definitely abounds of restaurants featuring menus whose ingredients are harvested literally around the corner. Wheat fields abound in Salamanca.

The term Salamanca itself means magic and one can surely find magic everywhere in the province. Let’s deviate from food for a moment and focus on the magic of Salamanca itself. Take for instance the infrastructure around the place. The province of Salamanca which is part of the autonomous community of Castile-Leon has lots of brick roads characteristic of old Europe. Even its center – Plaza Mayor – has a haunting vibe to it as it used to be the coliseum of executions in olden times. Today it is now a tourist attraction and gone were the horrors that used to be associated with the place. Nearby Plaza Mayor, one can find lots of sidewalk vendors displaying native-made trinkets and other fabulous homemade accessories which can be flaunted as novelty items or souvenirs when one returns to his country of origin. Nearby Plaza Mayor too, one will find other simple architectural masterpieces of Salamanca like the Catholic cathedral. This is something interesting to behold and ponder because a place of worship is established just a stone’s throw away from where executions used to be held. But that was Spain during the olden times when both the civil government and the Church are one. Today, rock and pop concerts featuring Spanish performers and recording artists are likewise featured in Plaza Mayor. There is an urban legend that states those concert crews see floating “white ladies” and other ghost-like sceneries inside the backstage of Plaza Mayor. True or not, this has increased tourism to some extent in Salamanca.

Now, let’s go back to the food. Most food served in Salamanca consists of meat such as roasted suckling pig. Called lechon de leche for its crispy flavor, roasted suckling pig tastes yummier than a roasted adult pig because of its relatively soft and crispier meat. But there are varieties of pork too such as chorizo or spicy sausage, ham and bacon. Sometimes chorizo is mixed with fried eggs and bread crumbs. That is really a hearty meal good for people on the go so tourists are advised to jog around Plaza Mayor a few hours after that hearty meal to work off the calories. Breakfast is served a little late though at about 9:30 a.m. so by 11 a.m., you have to start jogging. The next meal will have to wait as lunch is served at 3:00 p.m. while dinner will be tendered at 9:00 p.m. Salamanca may not be as hip as Ibiza but there do exist parties after dinner.

Before you go beyond the beauty of Salamanca, it is more comfortable if you knew something about the place. A little bit knowledge about its history is quite significant if planning to have a vacation in Salamanca, since there are many things you will meet in here attaching with their historical memory. Salamanca’s most important moment of history is during the year of 1218, when Alfonso IX established the University of Salamanca which is recently became one of the important and prestigious academic centers of Europe. The city of Salamanca nestled on a plateau by the Tormes River, while the Plaza Mayor is the central square of the city which is known as the living room of the Salmantinos or Salamancans. It can cater with 20, 000 people which abound with shaded arcades. The plaza is actually a former venue for bullfights and currently been the venue for concerts.

While wandering around the city of Salamanca, don’t forget to drop yourself in their Central Market which is next to Main Square, feel free to choose fresh goods displayed originally from Spain. At this present, the city of Salamanca has been recognized as one of the most impressive Renaissance cities in Europe. Since the sandstone buildings standing proud within the city of Salamanca grasps the wonderful golden glow which gives the Salamanca its nickname as La Ciudad Dorada or the golden city. The golden glow is known unique in Spain which comes from the “Villamayor Stone”, which is a type of sandstone, comes from a quarry located in Villamayor a town nearby Salamanca.

The folks of Salamanca purely speak its typical language which is Spanish. And because of it the city also became popular and rushed with students wanted to learn Spanish language. And in fact, many of the foreigners coming from worldwide opt to study with one of the prestigious University in Salamanca just to learn the language that makes the population of Salamanca rises from its previous number. And because of that their economic situation developed and became more progressive. Visiting the city of Salamanca is a great idea, and touring around its significant places is quite worthy to remember not to mention some of its hidden places. Don’t waste time of planning to go in the Salamanca and your money as well as your time will never be wasted.