Don Cervantes de Alcalá

We had no class on Monday because it was Thomas Aquinas' Day.  Here's how it works: our program is housed in the Philosophy and Letters building of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and, since Aquinas is the patron saint of philosophy, we get the day off.  Whenever the day of Saint Isidoro (patron saint of letters) rolls around, we get another break from class.  I suppose it's kind of like how Vanderbilt students get a day off from classes to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day (the patron saint of tolerance, perhaps?).

Anyway, Mitch (the other student living with me) and I took a trip Sunday afternoon to Alcalá de Henares, a small historic village east of Madrid.  The village is basically famous for two things: it was the original location of the Universidad Complutense and it was the original location of a one Miguel de Cervantes.  So naturally, we stopped by his birth home while we were there.  You can tell it's his house because Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are sitting on a bench out front.  Here's a picture of me and the Don giving old Sancho a hard time:

Whassamattayou?

We also took a tour of the university, which was a beautiful campus with lots of interior plazas and gardens.  I mean, imagine walking down this hallway on your way to class:

Rainy days would be that much easier.

I have to admit though, it would probably feel a little strange to attend a school where your history classroom is older than the period of time that you're studying.  

Another thing that stands out about Alcalá is the superfluity of storks.  For instance, here's one of the towers in the city wall (I'm not sure whose bright idea it was to put the storks on sentry duty).

This guard job is for the birds.

Otherwise, it's pretty much just a quaint little town.  With an emphasis on little.  After lunch was over, we walked a couple blocks from the center of town and here's how packed the streets were:

"In restless dreams I walked alone / Narrow streets of cobblestone"

As the evening waxed on, we got us to a nunnery and acquired some candied almonds to munch on while we waited for a theater tour to start.  But more on that in the next post...