Some Day My Prince Will Come

You are about to become acquainted with perhaps my favorite city in Spain (the jury’s still out). Could it be the snow-capped mountains and light snow flurries reminiscent of Provo that drew me to it? Or perhaps the forested countryside with secretive paths that reminded me of home? Or maybe could it have been the fairytale castle set up on a hill perfect for my ruggedly handsome (sin afeitar) mysterious prince (where is this man?!) to come and rescue me from my despair and loneliness and whisk me off into the sunset on his black, strapping stallion? The answer is yes, todo. Now that I have your minds pondering the wonders of this paradise, let me relay to you my escapades in Segovia. (The vivid imagery given in this opening scene can be attributed to the brilliant minds of Megan and Katie.)



This little wonder is situated about an hour and a half northeast of Madrid and to get there you get the lovely pleasure of driving through some gorgeous mountains amidst the snow and the glitzy parts of Madrid (totally saw where apparently most of the Real Madrid players live-including my love Cristiano Ronaldo). Antonio, our tour guide/travel agent, accompanied us here and throughout our whole adventure provided us with interested facts. He was pretty funny and I think he’s ran one too many tour groups because we even had time scheduled for bathroom breaks (he affectionately called it “quince minutos de pis”, lovely).






Anyway when we got there our first stop was at the bottom of a hill on this grassy knoll that allowed us to see amazing views of the Alcazar de Segovia. This is the royal palace place that the castle at the happiest place on Earth (Disneyland for all of you fun-suckers out there) is modeled after. So when we got out of the bus to take pictures it was most definitely snowing and I was all sorts of bundled up and about 6 inches thicker all around; I’m such a wuss when it comes to the cold (blame my mom). But it was actually really amazing to see the Alcazar in the snow and frolic amongst the falling flakes, the whole atmosphere was different and mysterious-I dug it.














So after our obligatory photo-stop we went back on the bus to go the La Iglesia de la Vera Cruz. This is the best of Segovia’s Romanesque churches. It was built in the early 13th or late 12th century by the Knight’s Templar-hello awesomeness. For all of you who only know the name and not exactly who these men were (similar to my experience) this was a western Christian military order known for their white mantles with a red cross (very prominent symbol in the church) and their skilled fighting in the crusades. Ok now story-time: According to legend this relic called the True Cross was the cross where Christ hung at Golgotha. It was discovered by the mother of Constantine I, Empress Helena, in 326 A.D. This church was built to house part of the True Cross (Vera Cruz), which is how it received its name. So it is more of a shrine than an actual functioning church. It is believed that as part of initiation the knights would have to stand vigil over the cross all night and this is the location where they were knighted. What makes this church so distinct is its 12-side exterior, modeled after the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem where the True Cross was originally found. This was pretty cool because it was basically this round thing with this big inner temple of two levels in the center. You can go up these treacherous stairs (I almost died many a time, probably at my rejoicing because I finally had stairs I could actually go up!) to the top where they had this table thing that looked like it was for sacrifices, but I don’t even know what was going down with that thing in the 13th century. Among other morbid details of the church they had these graves outside the building that attempted to lie in to find the best fit, but alas mud and white do not combine. Thus we mounted the bus once again and headed towards the main city.










Just like the last place that you read about (I hope), our bus could not go into the city so we had to run and jump out fast at the Roman aqueduct of Segovia. This beauty was built by the Romans (duh) in the 1st century A.D. by either Domitian or Trajan to carry water from El Rio Acebeda to the city. No one knows for sure how many arches there are(or these people just suck at counting because no one can get a consistent number) we do know that its highest point is 95 feet. This was built from mortarless granite (talk about brilliant engineering where they didn’t even need something other than the rocks and physics). The Spanish call it “El Puente” and it stands in front of La Plaza del Azoguejo (an old market square that today houses a nice little tourist place with some nice bathrooms). When the Moors took over in 1072 they destroyed 36 of the arches, which were later rebuilt by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1484. This thing is really a sight to behold I must say. It is huge and so pretty in the late afternoon sun, quite majestic. I just cannot believe how smart the Romans were in their construction-it truly amazes me.










Anyway after admiring that beaut we went and were going to go to another church, however it was closed-the first time in the 30 years of the program when BYU students have gone to it-because the caretaker was sick. It was kind of sad to realize this because apparently it had these great frescos on the walls that John Rosenburg of the Humanities Department at BYU talked about in a devotional about 10 years ago. So since we couldn’t go there we moved on to La Casa de los Picos (House of Spikes). This is exactly what it was; the exterior walls had these large spike things sticking out. It was built in the 15th century and over the years has served many different public and private purposes. It is currently La Escuela de Arte y Superior de Diseño de Segovia. What was really cool was that all the old buildings here had these patterns carved into their outside walls. This was apparently to keep snow from accumulating on the walls and thus keeping it warmer. But it also served to make the city all the more pretty.




So our next stop was the Plaza Mayor (not in Madrid though-they like to repeat names and just add de + new city’s name) and cathedral (big shock) of Segovia. The plaza is still the center for many festivities. On the one side of the square is La Iglesia San Miguel, which is where Isabella was crowned Queen of Castile in 1474.

The Cathedral of Segovia is on the other side of the plaza. Construction began on it in 1525 under Carlos V. The cathedral was not finished though for 200 years, so it was the last major Gothic building in Spain (interesting fact: the term Gothic comes from the barbaric Visigoths. During the period after Gothic architecture intellectuals looked back on the previous period and thought the buildings looked barbaric in reference to the Visigoths. During the actual Gothic time period they called this style by another name.). It is affectionately called “La dama de las catedrales” by Spaniards and for how detailed the exterior is, it is surprisingly bare on the inside. Going in it was pretty much like every other Catholic cathedral we’ve in. They did have these awesome leather books of Gregorian chants that are still used today, but other than that I won’t bore you with more details.






So after freezing our butts off in the cathedral (as can be expected) we went to Rodilla (a little café-type shop) to get some hot chocolate to warm us up and eat our food. It was so warm in there that we stayed a good hour and then went and got some pastries, as usual. Then the three explorers (me and the two Megans) went and did what we do best-investigated the Juderia. Segovia had one of Spain’s largest Jewish districts back in the day and thus their Juderia was quite large. However there wasn’t too much to see but it was nice to explore that part of the city, especially during siesta time because everything was so quiet.




After eating we all met up again to go to Cinderella’s Castle, I mean the Alcazar. It was really amazing up close and came equipped with a moat (though not currently functioning) and this huge drop off that would be really easy to fall into because of the lack of guard rails on the sides. Apparently this young prince was in the Alcazar on a balcony with his nanny watching some race that was going on below. Then he ended up falling off and she immediately jumped off after him (not to try and save him, but to kill herself because she knew it was inevitable). So this boy’s grave is in the cathedral that we went to, which is actually really interesting because you never see children’s graves in cathedrals. (As far as tombs-of the carved nature-go, courtesy of Antonio: If a person is lying on one pillow then he is a priest, 2=bishop, 3=cardinal and 4=pope, so now you know the next time you go looking at some graves.)










So the Alcazar is perched on a rock between the Clamors and Eresma Rivers. It dates back to the 14th and 15th centuries but was almost completely destroyed by fire in 1862. When rebuilt it was more exaggerated than the original. It started as an Arab fortress and was then taken over by Christians (and was one of their favorite places to stay). This place is characterized by Royal Romance because it is where Isabella first met Ferdinand and both of their thrones are still there-both of equal size and design to signify the relationship of equalities in ruling. Going in you can tell it has Arab influence and particularly in the ceilings you can see the mudejar architecture. One cool, but creepy room was where many kings and queens’ statues line the walls. I guess it was built because Isabella’s grandson, to stay in power, needed to prove his lineage so he built this room to show his family tree basically. But what was the best about this whole place was definitely the tower, which was built by Isabella’s father as a prison, because it gave you a fantastic view of the city. It was gorgeous up there and the nature that you see is so fantastic; from the forests to the mountains. The mountain range is called La Mujer Muerte (The Dead Woman) because that exactly what it looks like and there are a bunch of legends on how it came to be (I didn’t get a good picture of it so I would recommend going all Google Images on that stuff). So after looking around and taking mucho pictures we headed back down to the bus.










We got to walk down the stairs by the aqueduct, which gave us a fantastic view in the afternoon sun. Beautiful! And by that time we were all tuckered out to on the bus ride back we just watched a movie (the older version of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, a book that I recommend to anyone and the 2007 Masterpiece Theatre version of the movie as well, this version was disappointing and Captain Wentworth was not the rugged, gentle, amazing man he was supposed to be).














And then it was back into the real world where no knight can sweep me away on his noble steed and we can gallop off into the distance, gazing deeply into his sparkly emerald eyes, full of the fire of a thousand suns as he whispers “Would you like to go to the sofa?” into my delicate ear. (Preview for the next post-curious? Good. Keep reading.)

Hotter than the sun in the south in Spain: Numero Tres

Ok this is the final installment in my Southern Adventures series. I hope you have enjoyed the ride as much as I have and that it is not too pathetic that I probably got back from the south about three weeks ago (we’ll blame the one midterm I just finished today). So now you get to hear all about Cordoba and the wonders in that particular place.

But before we delve into Cordoba we must first talk about Italica, a city of Roman ruins that we went to on our way from Sevilla. After the Battle of Ilipa Publius Cornelius Scipio Aficanus founded Italica in 206 B.C. Trajan and Hadrian were both born here (famous Roman emperors). When we were exploring first off it was raining and muddy but still cool, and also there was this archeologist lady that was following us around wherever we went I guess afraid that we would do something dumb or detrimental to the site. Yes because eleven giggling girls with umbrellas can be quite dangerous. Anyway the first, and probably the coolest, thing we saw was this massive amphitheater that is apparently the second largest coliseum in the world, behind the one in Rome. It was really awesome because due to decay you could even see down to where they kept the animals that they would fight (not that we could actually go down there because that would just bring too much joy to my soul and we can’t have that). It was still really amazing to wander around that place, but kind of disturbing to think about the types of things that they took pleasure in watching there. The rest of our visit to the city mainly consisted of the ruins of Roman houses that had these remarkable really well-preserved mosaic tile floors and random statues of naked people, very Roman.










So after our brief foray into the Roman world we were back on our way to our final destination. Once we got the Cordoba we heard some really just fantastic news: the bus is not allowed in the old part of the city (where our hotel was) and thus with our luggage we would be walking. It actually turned out to be pretty funny because man did we look like a motley crew! Picture 17 people all with suitcases trudging across a bridge and throughout a city in the pouring rain in the early evening, feet covered in mud, half-awake from sleeping on the bus and basically soaked. Anywho when we finally made it to our hotel we got all settled in and before we took off again we had enough time to watch a Spanish gameshow called Password, kind of like our $10,000 Pyramid. My favorite part was when the word was “Chino” and after the one clue “Arroz” (rice) they got it, classic.


So our first adventure for the day was to this synagogue. It is one of Spain’s three remaining pre-Inquisition synagogues, built in 1315 in the Jewish quarter of the city. There was this great stucco work and Hebrew inscriptions on the walls of Old Testament scriptures. It was really interesting because I’m so used to these huge religious buildings here, but this one was actually just one main room and patio that we could see and then one room upstairs. I didn’t realize they actually built them that small back then! Thus our time spent there was not too long so we had ourselves a bit of free time.










One of the girls in our group had read about this house that also functions as a museum for different works of art so we set off to find that place. Sadly after twisting and winding our way there (I think we have a few in our group finally getting a hang of this whole map dealio) the museum was closed. But it was still cool to see different parts of the city and randomly stop in to little shops along the way, especially since the city was basically deserted due to the rain and the fact that it was siesta time.






By that time we needed to meet up with Landes and family for dinner so we headed back. It was the birthday of one of the girls in our group so we had to celebrate that with a delicious Spanish meal and then pastries after. Sadly by the time we got done with dinner it was close to ten and many shops were closed, including ones for delicious sweets (even the one this nice young guy with long flowing locks and about 3 inches shorter than me took us to). So we returned to the hotel defeated, and sin pastries.


The next day was our last in Andalucia so we had to make the most of it. We started our day at this little mercadilla (outdoor market basically and very similar to Pike’s Place). When we got there it was still kind of early so not too many booths were open (always our luck) but we did get to see this awesome fish market with all sorts of interesting creatures (Pike’s minus the throwing). We were all fascinated by the live clams that were still moving around and sticking out some weird body part from their shells. Funny part was that in the back of the fish market there was this little pastry booth that had the most delicious, and cheap, sweets. How could I pass up such delicious creations? Answer: I couldn’t. So I finally got me some postres! We didn’t stay too long here because we had bigger and better things to see and do.


Our next stop was the Mezquita-Catedral de Cordoba. This building is from the 8th century and was the crowning Muslim architectural achievement in the West. The most famous part of it is probably the red and white arches (made from brick and stone in the front and just painted on in the later addition to the back). What is unique and cool about this place is that it represents 4 different time periods of architecture. Also if you were wondering why it has two names (mosque and cathedral) it is because it has a cathedral built right in the middle of the building. This cathedral was built in the 16th century by Catholics that tore out the middle part of the mosque and built their church inside-good thing they didn’t tear down the whole thing. So from what I’ve mentioned in past posts and such I bet you can guess what my favorite part was. I loved the look of the Moorish architecture here and the red and white arches seemed endless and had a really powerful effect. And then you go to the middle and see this amazingly detailed cathedral area, with these grand carved pillars of white and gold and a full choir area with dark wood carvings. It was really pretty and not overdone like the others we’ve seen, but totally out of place. It was quite confusing to me why the Catholics would even want to do this and keep the mosque in the first place, but still quite intriguing. Wandering through there was quite an adventure because even though it is off-season there were a ton of people and tour groups (and field trips) there. They did also have a Patio de Naranjas that was so pretty with all the trees and fountain. There were orange trees everywhere and I guess in the spring you will never forget the smell of that place and how fantastic it is (maybe I’ll come back then and see how true that is).




















So after seeing this great building we decided it was time to head to the Alcazar de los Reyes Cristianos. This was commissioned in 1328 by Alfonso XI. Ferdinand and Isabella governed Castile from this fortress on the river as they prepared to conquer Granada and this was also the place where Columbus talked with Isabella about his plans for sailing. It basically looks like a simple castle from the outside but the inside was more detailed and pretty, as always. I greatly enjoyed exploring there. We walked up two of the towers; to get to the top of one was impossible because they like to ruin all my fun with locks. The other one you could go pretty far up and get a good view of the gardens, but I wanted to go all the way up. Good thing they just used a low gate and chains in this case. I think I have a strange liking for doing illegal things here-they’re just so exciting and easy. It’s not like the view was much better at the top, but the feeling was much cooler being up there. Anyway then we snuck back down and started exploring the downstairs.




















Here they had these old Arab baths. It was kind of creepy down there; they were in these dark tunnel/cave things with only the help of small light bulbs to light the way. They weren’t too exciting, just a little dusty, but it was fun exploring down there. So then we made our way outside to the gardens. I love that a lot of the gardens here have amazing water things everywhere and that everything is very symmetrical and well-tended. Everything is a little less natural, but still incredibly gorgeous. We walked around the gardens for a bit and then got hungry so we set off for our free time, which basically just included finding places to eat food and get ice cream. Then sadly, it was time for us to head back to the hotel and gather our things and make the trek back to the bus to head home.










I slept most of the way back because I was not feeling well that day and we got back in to Alcala at about 8:30. Let me tell you it was absolutely fantastic to come home and eat Blanca food! Oh how I missed that lady and her crazy comments and delicious food always waiting for us. Blanca I cannot tell you how much I adore your ham and peas! And that was my week spent in the south of Spain. Can I just say I’m glad we went when we did because officially the south is under about 3 feet of water in a lot of places right now and the rains keep on a-pouring. I hope the damage to the people’s houses and buildings there is minimal.


Well folks I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride as much as I have and that these long posts have not deterred you too much from continuing reading this blog. Soon you will get to hear about my time spent in blizzard country: Segovia. Stay tuned.