I have been in Salamanca, Spain for one month officially today and apart from yesterday it had only rained ONCE since we were here. It was a day when we had a trip to a museum so the rain was barely noticeable.  But what happened to us yesterday and what is still continuing today is something much worse.  We had a day trip yesterday to Los Arribes/ El Rio Duero.  We met at the bus station at 8:15 am and were at the river by around 10:30. No problems.  We got on the boat and thank goodness it was covered because as soon as the boat took off down the river it started raining, and currently 31 hours later, it has not stopped.

Besides the weather and being stuck in a boat with a ton of old, coughing people, the trip initially was pretty cool.  One side of the river is Spain and the other side is Portugal so you were in like a middle ground.  Unfortunately I couldn’t hear much of what our tour guide was saying so I have no idea about the facts of the river or the natural habitat around it.  It stopped raining for about 10 minutes so we went up on the upper deck of the boat to take pictures and get some fresh air but it was really really windy.  We then finished the boat trip and were going to see a little show with rare birds but the rain cancelled it.  We saw three birds inside but couldn’t stand to look at the exhibit because of the harsh conditions- all of their wings were clipped, they had ropes on their feet and people kept using flash photography so the bird’s eyes probably hurt too.

After the river we went to see an underground wine cellar which was cool because apparently there’s one under every house in the town we were in and they used to be all connected!  It was where the people would make and then store their wine.  I liked that but then we had to walk in the pouring rain and wind to lunch – we were going to see a castle but our guide cancelled it because the weather was so miserable.

Anyways, after we had just gotten dry from lunch we had to walk back to the bus in the rain, sit all wet on the bus for 1.5 hours to another town, then walk around in a legitimate storm to an olive oil museum and old castle.  I honestly would have been fine with everything but the rain put me in SUCH a worse mood than I wanted to be in.