Spanish differences:

Last night, we went out for Tapas and Drinks at a local restaurant in Salamanca. It was an optional trip that cost about 7€ to attend & since we have an AIFS allowance of 10.5€ for reimbursed cultural outings, I ended up choosing it over dinner with my señora and family. Plus, I've REALLY been wanting to get OUT of my WARM, semi-uncomfy house and pretty much just see what the Salamancan dining experience is like! :-)

So we got to the place and they served our drinks first. I ordered a Coke & got a Pepsi (which I guess is considered about the same so that was pretty much no biggie) but then the culture shock thing hit again & I remembered that we didn't get free refills. :-(

...Well, best believe I sipped that drink EXTRAAAA SLOWWWWWLY!

I ended up ordering some type of meat tapa which basically looked like a meat-kabob and was served on a piece of pan (bread) and dipped in olive oil. It was actually GOOD! (salty as all get out, but it hit the SPOT for sure!)

After devouring it in like 30 seconds while all my friends looked on as if I were going to share, someone finally asked

"Is this the ONLY bar we're going to for 7.50€?!?!"

hahahahaha.... Great!

For once I didn't feel like the snobby American asking for more food. :-)

(But in retrospect, I'm SO glad she asked about more food, because that lil piece of meat was not about to fill me up at all!)

Thankfully, that one tapa bar that we visited wasn't the only one on our agenda! We went to two more that night for a total of three before going back home and by that time, I had definitely gotten full off of "patatas" (potatoes), "juevos con jamón," cokes/pepsi's, and "SANGRIAS" (red wine with fruit juice - LOVE IT).

As we wrapped up our tapa excursion, we learned some pretty interesting facts about Salamancan pub/tapa life from our tour guide, Roberto. First, the few streets that we had passed (probably 15-20 total) en route to our destinations had more than 150 tapas bars in that one area!!! It was later explained that Salamanca has more tapas bars per capita than ANY other city in the world! Ridiculous.

So that was a pretty good night. Afterwards me and some friends just walked around the Plaza Mayor until we basically got tired and ready to go back to the heat! (hopefully the next few days will be a LOT cooler than those during my first week because the weather people say we've been suffering from a heat wave that was pushed North from the Sahara Desert!)

We'll see!