I was up pretty early after my early night and after packing up and putting my things in the lock up for the day I headed off to Segovia. Different people will tell you that either Toledo or Segovia is the best small medieval city. I wanted to be able make up my mind on my own.
After wandering blindly I found the first big attraction, a Roman Aqueduct from the 1st century. I think that this is the first time that I have seen something like this. It was really amazing. No mortar was used in the aqueducts construction, rocks were just meticulously placed. I loved it and spent some time just staring at it, amazed at the construction.
According to my guidebook the fairy tale looking Alcazar was opened daily. This wasn´t the case. It was a Monday, and things do often shut on Mondays, but I was taking my books word. I wasn´t bothered so much that I wasn´t going to get to go inside of it. I´ve been to loads of castles, how different could this one possibly be? What bothered me was that because of all the trees in front of it I couldn´t even get a good look at it, let alone a picture.
The biggest frustration was that everything has been closed for the last 5 days. Don´t these people know that it´s a holiday and not a holiweek?
The only thing that was open was the cathedral. Let´s Go had said that the outside was the best part, however the sheer size of the building was interesting. I decided to check it out despite the lackluster review. The outside is amazing, I tried to get several close up pictures of the stone work.
Inside the cathedral had an interesting story. The original cathedral was located across the street from the Alcazar and was destroyed in 1521 during the Communeros war. Instead of repairing they picked a new spot and built an entirely new structure. In order to save on building costs, some parts of the original cathedral were used. This made the interior an odd mix of the old and older. Some of the chapels were pretty interesting and I managed to sneak a few pictures. There was one painting called the tree of life that showed Jesus with a skeleton cutting down a tree. They both appeared to be doing the cutting. On the top of the tree was a big table with loads of people having a party around it. I didn´t quite get it, but it was still interesting.
If the castle had been opened I may not have bothered with the cathedral, but I am glad that I saw it.
When I got back to Madrid I made one more attempt to get the blog up to date, I was getting so close!
Soon I was off, on a night bus to Malaga. I was glad to leave Madrid, I had spent 6 nights there and was ready for a change.
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