SEGOVIA

Since Monday was a holiday (Father's Day) Brent and the kids had it off so we took advantage and got a taxi to the old city of Segovia.  After days and days of rain, we were delighted that the forecast was no rain and in the mid 50's for this day.  A couple of us went jacketless and soon regretted that decision once we got there and it felt no more than 30 degrees.


This city is great because you can walk to everything and there are so many amazing sites as we hope you can see in the many following pictures.  We are only sharing a few main attractions.  

The Aqueduct of Segovia

This thing is amazing!! Just a few facts about this, starting with my favorite: *they say it was Roman built in the end of the 1st century to the beginning of the 2nd century *Made up of about 25,000 granite blocks stacked together without any mortar * has a length of 818 meters, * the highest part is 29 meters which is what you can see in the picture.

This is to show you that it just goes and goes throughout the city.  And yes we do like each other!

The background is so beautiful that I kept trying to capture it through the aqueduct.  Kaiya is so cute here, but don't miss Mason in the background going up the steps. 

 

The Segovia Cathedral

This is also quite impressive, it is the last Gothic cathedral built in Spain. It is considered the masterpiece of Basque-Castilian Gothic and is known as "The Lady of Cathedrals."  Construction began in 1525 but not finished until 1768.

Just another view.  This cathedral was on the way to the "Cinderella Castle" from the aqueduct. 

These were the cool narrow roads that led to everything throughout the city, and when cars came down these everyone had to jump up on the sidewalks and squeeze their bellies in.  This is on our walk to or from the castle.   

The Alcázar of Segovia or the Segovia Castle

 The Alcázar was originally built as an Arab fortress but has served as a royal palace, a state prison, a Royal Artillery College and a military academy since then. The first reference to this particular Alcázar was in 1120.  The castle is one of the inspirations for Walt Disney's Cinderella Castle (some say the Sleeping Beauty castle).

This is the back view and if it hadn't been so cold we would have hiked down below to get a better shot from the front.  We plan to do that the next time we come. 

This is where the tours start and where the draw bridge is.  It is really far down to the moat.  And yes those dots in the center are us. 

We were eager to go inside the castle to warm-up, but even with the covered windows it was only a little less freezing inside.  Even though I don't want to bore you with all the incredible artwork and architecture of the insides of the castle I do want to show you the outside views from inside.  

This is zoomed in quite a bit, so it is hard to tell how far up we are.  I was taking a picture for Mason to show him the caves all along the cliffs on the left.

And one more.

 

The Walls of Segovia

This is outside the castle looking back toward the city.  They built this wall to surround the city 

having a  perimeter of over 3,000 m.  It begins and ends in the Alcazar (Castle).

The walls are made of limestone masonry, built in part from large blocks of granite. Tombstones of the ancient Roman necropolis were also used in the construction .

 

Our Drive Home from Segovia

 

Our driver took us home the "beautiful way"  or over the mountain and through the woods.  It really was pretty, it just takes 1.5 hours instead of 1 hour.  As you can see there is a ski resort at the top of the mountain, behind us is the kids area and in front of us is the ski resort.  We did not ask the driver to stop or to let us out since we were just getting warm and we've seen ski resorts before, but apparently we needed a picture of this ski resort.

 

I know this isn't the most amazing landscape, but I snapped this picture just before arriving home to show how close we live to Madrid.  The towers in the center of the picture are the tallest buildings in Spain. 

When we returned home we realized we needed to pick up some food for dinner, so Brent and I went out walking from store to store looking for something that wasn't closed down for Father's Day.   As we were making our way back home Brent noticed a large bag of hangers sitting next to the garbage.  "Happy Father's Day Brent",  he has been needing more hangers ever since we arrived here but we haven't found a place we can buy them yet.