This past weekend, I traveled to Valladolid with two of the girls who also teach English in Palencia.
Valladolid is a city of about 500,000 people an hour south of Palencia and an hour north of Madrid. It is very easy (and cheap!) to catch a bus from Palencia to Valladolid and vice versa.
Upon arriving in Valladolid, we immediately began to walk around and look at the sites, similar to the ones across Spain and Europe: plazas, parks, churches, universities and statues.
Plaza Mayor, Plaza España, statues of Columbus and Cervantes, churches galore, and of course, tapas, were on all the day’s agenda. Oh, and did I mention the peacocks? Yep, just like in Seville, there were wild peacocks walking around in one of the parks.
We walked all day from one site to another, and I shamelessly played the tourist card and repeatedly pulled out my camera
If Palencia has taught me that I love smaller cities, Valladolid has only reinforced that idea. Although Valladolid is a beautiful city, complete with one of the oldest universities in Spain, museums, jogging trails, and wonderful shopping, it is simply too big for me. I can’t quite say what exactly it is about big cities that I don’t enjoy, so I will leave it simple and declare myself a small town girl.
It was also nice to be able to add Valladolid to the ever-growing list of Spanish cities that I have visited: Madrid, Seville, Burgos, León, Santander, Zaragoza, Toledo and of course, Barcelona and Palencia.
Below are some pictures of Plaza Mayor, the Columbus statue, wild peacocks, and the main street for shoe shopping.
I hope that through my posts you can get a small taste of what Spain—and Europe in general—are like!
