Spain offers many pleasures to its visitors, but sitting on the terrace of a café on Salamanca's fantastic Plaza Mayor, enjoying tapas and a cold drink on a sunny autumn day while watching busy locals and hordes of picture-taking tourists pass by, is really hard to beat. The main square is but one of this great city's many attractions, which is equally famous for its venerable university, the historic part of which makes for a very interesting visit. As in many other Spanish cities, there is also a great cathedral (actually a joint complex of 2 separate churches) to admire, as well as a Roman bridge and many historic buildings scattered around the Old Town. This is where the purest form of Spanish is supposed to be spoken (accounting for the tens of thousands of foreigners in its language schools), the city where Columbus explained his plans to sceptic professors and clergymen a few months before his first voyage, and the city where Miguel de Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Calderón de la Barca studied - and today a must-see for any visitor not only to Castile but to Spain.