so as most of yall probably know, daddy made a nice (9 day) detour from england to come visit espana for semana santa. Spaniards are hard-core catholics (that is practically the only denomination here…no protestants), so they get the whole week before easter off. good for us! besides andalucia (posts to come), segovia was our planned day trip from madrid. There are a lot of neat things about Segovia. First of all, it is about 90 km to the NW of Madrid, and can be reached in 30 minutes on the high speed AVE train! that is 180 km/hr on average, and apparently can reach speeds of up to 300 km/hr = 186 mph!! holy shitake mushrooms!!!

well we had a little difficulty getting there actually, because chelsea thought it would be simple to buy tickets the day of at the machines in the RENFE station, just like she had done when going to Toledo some months ago…but no. welcome to spain, where nothing is efficient nor makes sense. Honestly, isn’t the purpose of a high-speed train defeated if you must wait >1 hour to buy the ticket…and not possible to buy it from a machine in the train station. DUMB DUMB DUM!

well that is a whole story in itself, but i will spare yall my sanity. in short, we took the ‘cercanias’ to another station, which connected us to the regional train (as per the advice of the ticket vendor…who said it would be the next fastest thing to the AVE). liar!!! he apparently did not sell us the whole ticket to segovia, just the ticket to the other station…because while we were on the 2nd train, the conductor came around, we gave him our tickets, and he proceeded to shake his head and say “esto no es valido” which means “this isn’t valid”…ugh. i tell him that we honestly didn’t know, because we talked to the guy at the ticket booth (and it wouldnt have been possible to buy a ticket at the other train station because the line there was even more ginormous than at the first), and blah blah blah..but honestly, we didn’t know! and then i thought he said “entonces, cuarenta” = “well then, 40 euros” and i was like “40???” …but then he said “no, doce cuarenta” (12.40), they sound so similar! i thought for sure he was gonna charge us a ton extra, but he didn’t, yay!…still took 2 hours to get there tho

anyway, once we got there, we had to figure out that we needed to take a bus to the main part of town. that was not too bad, but by this time it was 2pm and we were hungry! so we wander around a bit until we see a sign for a really good deal on the menu del dia. we search out the place and it ends up being a nice family-run restaurant…they give us a WHOLE bottle of wine with our meal, and we end up getting asparagus with some sort of cream as our first course, and i get salmon and daddy gets pollo (chicken) as the 2nd. also we got arroz con leche as our dessert, and everything was sooooo good! also, i talked to this guy who was sitting at the table next to us, as he seemed to come there a lot, and he gave us really good directions to our next destination. the alcazar!

On the way to the Alcazar, we end up stumbling upon the “plaza mayor” and the cathedral on the way, so a pleasant surprise! the cathedral is HUGE, gothic style with a nice courtyard, and is “widely considered Europe’s last gothic cathedral.” Preciosa.

Alcazar is a term which means more or less “castle-palace,” and I think it is a moorish/arabic term from when the moores (not candace’s matt type of moore) invaded spain. It was originally an Arab Fort and in the shape of the bow of a ship. We climbed the tower (which has an EXTREMELY narrow staircase), and the view from the top was amazing! we got some nice shots of the cathedral with the snow-capped mountains in the background. lovely!

we hung around for a bit and had some wine before heading to the aqueduct. we had not prepared ourself for the sheer size and majesty that is the aqueduct of segovia! it was built in either the 1st century AD or the early years of the 2nd century! and it was still in use until recently due to the wear and tear from heaters and automobiles…boo! Segovia and the aqueduct are now considered a World UNESCO Heritage Site, and therefore consciously preserved and maintained true to their original form.

Daddy and I were smart and bought our return tickets when we arrived, so we caught the last AVE back (we loved every minute, and so later glad we decided to catch the last one). The AVE is SO fast. wow.

well that entails most of our segovia adventure. This wednesday, Alex and I are going to Stuttgart, Munich, and Tubingen (u with the 2 little dots over it) to visit our friend Lisa! very excited and I will be busting out the very little german that I know. good thing almost all germans speak practically perfect english!