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.)
Perfection comes in blog form.
ReplyDeleteSo glad I could be a co-conspirator for the beginning. Just remember, your very own version of Captain Wentworth will come for you someday.
very poetic. i salute you.
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