Spanish Fairy Tale

Segovia: fantastical, medieval, solid.  May not be how someone would describe it in a travel book, but I never said this was a professional travel blog.

First we visited Iglesia de la Vera Cruz, a dodecagonal church.  Although I've seen a lot of medieval churches, this one was interesting because it was not only a lot smaller, but it was kind of circular (hence the dodecagonal shape...).

Iglesia de Vera Cruz

Next we trekked up the hill to the Alcázar, a castle that apparently inspired the Disney castle.  The views from the bottom of the castle were beautiful, as was the view down from the castle.  It was a typical Spanish castle, up on a hill, with a moat (that would have given dad a tummy ache to look down into) and it had Muslim influences in a lot of the architecture and decorations.  

semi Disney-esque right?

pretty Islam inspired tiles on the wall 

Sun dial in a court yard in the castle.  Guess what time it is...

After the castle, we went to the city center and medieval part of the city, a series of winding narrow streets with stores on the lower levels and apartments above. The buildings were decorated with Muslim designs.


One interesting story was about a house that had weird pointy things coming out of it, like pyramidal spikes.  The people who originally owned the house were Jews, and it was known as a Jewish house.  So the guy who bought it from them put the spikes on to make it known as the spikey house rather than the Jewish house so he wouldn't get questioned by the inquisition.  They really love Jews here.  Hence all the pig.

Casa de Espinas

The last sight to see was the aqueduct, dating back to the Roman times.  It was a behemoth of a structure.  At one point, an ambulance drove through the aqueduct and into the old city.  Quite a funny sight to see, mixing the modern and the ancient.  (Well not funny considering someone was probably having some serious issue, but you know what I mean).  

Me and Kelly in front of the aqueduct.  She's pretty tall, but not tall enough...

Before heading back to Madrid, we stopped at a really nice restaurant for a lunch provided by the program.  We had typical Spanish starters, pollo asada, and a dessert special to Segovia called "Poche de Segovia."

Poche de Segovia. Yum!