Weekend Excursion to Segovia
Trip Start
Dec 29, 2008
1
11
27
Trip End
May 30, 2009
Where I stayed
La Caa de los Garcia Halcones
Segovia, Castile-León, Spain and Canary Islands
Friday, February 13, 2009
I am posting this about a week late from a friend's computer because mine has suddenly stopped working. I really can not explain it, but this computer has given me nothing but trouble this year. Fortunately my host sister's husband works for Dell, so he came over and diagnosed my computer as needing a Windows reload. I'm working on it, but in the meantime, I'll share the details about the visit to Segovia.
Let me preface this by saying that I am not very smart. An intelligent person would have checked the weather report before leaving, but unfortunately I did not. We met at the Moncloa bus station per usual and took the relatively short trip northwest to the Segovia province. Midway through the trip I looked up from my book to realize that everywhere I looked was blanketed in a thick layer of snow. I was wearing my winter coat, but only one layer beneath that.
A number of kids from the program were still in London, but noticeably absent was Marni. We assumed that she just slept in until Alex Hoffman got a call from her as we were leaving Madrid. Apparently she got there five minutes after we had left and planned on taking a train to meet us. As we would later find out, the train took several hours, meaning she missed the guided tour and arrived just as we were leaving.
The tour was interesting and the city was beautiful of course, but the biting cold just got to me at a certain point and I was ready to find the nearest heated restaurant. After leaving the famous Alcazar castle, we headed to an eatery and spent our hour and a half chatting at a table that overlooked the city.
I missed the meeting about the excursion when I was in Portugal, so I did not realize that there was a part II. We left Segovia and headed the short distance to the Palacio Real, a former summer/winter retreat of the Spanish monarchs. Unfortunately my camera died just as we reached the grounds, but photos inside were prohibited anyway. Words can not accurately describe how lavish and beautiful this place was. It felt somewhat like a less crowded Versailles, only on a smaller scale. The snow at the Palacio was even deeper than it had been in Segovia, so of course we broke out into a snow fight in the 10 minutes we had to traverse the grounds. I'll admit that I was hit once or twice, but the enemy had on gloves and was in a better location.
Our next excursion will be to Salamanca next weekend, so that will probably be up within that week. I will load the Segovia photos when I get my computer back.
Thanks for reading.
