Our Week in Spain (part 1)

March 15, 2002

We resolve to visit Segovia an old fortress town featuring a cathedral and a Roman aqueduct. One of the smaller churches, Santa Cruz, was built by the Knights Templar, which interests me. It is used to store a piece of the "true cross."

We begin by buying a map of Madrid, so we can navigate out of town, and from there rely on our Michelin map of Spain. We get out to the car and realize we're still "tweened" - Leganes, where we are, is too far south and does not appear even on a gigantic 3-piece map of Madrid. Fearless, we venture forth anyway. We know we want the M-40 to take us, clockwise around the city until we can jump off on the N-IV to Segovia. After a period of confusion and reversing fields, we get going the right direction, only to miss the exit to the N-IV. Rita catches on, and navigates us to an alternate route. This ends up being a fortuitous sequence, as we travel past many interesting sights, and since we are not in a hurry, we are able to stop several times for photo opportunities.

The first stop is just off the autovilla (freeway), when we stop to gawk at an old hotel and the hills behind it. Shortly after that we leave the freeway for a winding two-lane road - narrow, but recently paved and a smooth ride.

Soon we pass a little town, Montebuena, where, I can see from the road, there appear to be giant stork's nests on the top of the old church. We actually sail past, and go back for another look. There are dogs chasing cars when we pull in, and indeed the church has a collection of huge bird's nests. We pull up to a stone fence, just as the church bell rings a single gong, and horse behind the fence, which we could not see, jumps to his feet and into our view. Rita is willing to pet him, but he is not interested. We consider bribing him with half an apple, but decide against it. Where we come from, you don't feed other peoples animals without asking.

We walk around the building, and there is an arched doorway (the keystone engraved with the year, 1696), leading into a vestibule. The floor is stone, and worn by the tread of a million feet. The church is not open, but there is a window in the door, and peaking inside is like looking directly into the 17th century. Stone floors worn concave, dark wooden benches and pews, unpadded, and appearing to be hundreds of years old, an ornate altar with a sequence of side altars, and an ancient wooden confessional.

Just down the road from there, we stop to take a picture of some old stone fences, then continue on. We reach our northernmost point, after crossing over the Sierra ?? Mountains, and come upon a small, old looking little town not marked on the map. We pull in to look, and find ourselves driving on a series of very narrow roads, no wider than alleyways. An old man is walking by, and we ask him if there's a café. He points and speak, and I get the idea we need to go back to the main road. On the way back out, we pass a very odd looking church style building with fencing of stone topped by sharp craggy stones. We take a picture and make our way to the main road where we quickly find the café. We order coffee and the proprietor is nice enough to mark where we are on the map: Caslas.

We keep driving west along the northern face of the mountains, the clouds are hanging so low we can not always see the tops, but we can see enough to know there is snow up there, all along the way. We pass several small towns, most not marked on the map, each with a church with stork nests on top.

Before long we come to the bottom of a long hill, and see Segovia at the top. The roman aqueduct, two thousand years old, is still intact and still used! It's the first thing you see entering Segovia, and in some ways the most impressive. We are lucky and find a place to park on the main road leading up into town. A short uphill hike, and we are touching the gray stone of the aqueduct.

From there we walk into town, up to the massive Gothic cathedral, where we pay to get in and walk through. This is a slightly smaller version of the massive cathedral in Toledo. It's dark and chilly inside with the same layout of main altar and choir enclosure with a pair of massive and major league pipe organs, and a series of chapels around the perimeter, each dedicated to a different saint and, I believe, each financed by a wealthy patron in some previous century.

From the cathedral we continue walking to the far end of town where the Aquicerra (sp.) is. This one is a rebuild of an older historical site (where, allegedly, Isabella met Ferdinand, and Columbus came to plead for his financing). The guide book says the original castle burnt down in the 1860 (how do you burn a stone castle down, I keep wondering), and the current building is a replica "of no historical interest." On the strength of this characterization we save ourselves the E3/each admission. It is from here, however, we are able to see the Knight Templar church, below us in the valley. It's getting late by this time, so we turn back around and find the car, hoping to get back to the hotel before it gets too dark.