Segovia Day Trip

Early morning yikes.  I passeddd out on the bus ride, and we got to Segovia 3 hours later before I knew it haha.  Our first stop in Segovia was the Royal Gardins of Queen Isabel.  I can't remember the king, but she was the Queen of Spain, and married another royal person from a country that I can't put my finger on right now (somewhere in the Middle East I believe).  As a wedding gift, the Royal Family of Spain had all of these ridiculous gardens and fountains built. 

Gardens

Sweet fountain, but they only run the water through it like 3 times a year and it's  HUGE deal

Jesús was talking to us the WHOLE time through these little machines that we plugged headphones into and he had a mic attached to his shirt collar.  It was certainly interesting but he rambles sometimes and can be hard to understand.  He would get on a roll and start using words none of us knew, but the fountains and gardens were still cool and pretty.  Another perfect day in Spain, it was a bit colder like 60s but still nice out.

From the gardens, we hopped on the bus and headed to the aqueduct.  This was SWEET.  First of all, they used this aqueduct for running water until 1950, which absolutely blew my mind.  They built the aqueduct because the city center is at a low point, and water would not flow through it, then back up hill, so they built this super tall aqueduct to carry water through the city. 

So Cool!

Aqueduct = Awesome!

There is also a purification house that used super old techniques like running the water through sand and what not to get the water clean.  As you can see in the closeup, there is NO CEMENT used on the pillars or the arcs, just at the top to keep the water from leaking out.  How they did this, I do not know, it was certainly an incredible engineering feet. 

We then went into the center of town (like a tne minute walk from the aqueduct, Segovia is not a big city) and had some lunch.  After lunch we headed to the Royal Castle of Segovia, the one Walt Disney based his caslte on.  FINALLY we were allowed to take pictures inside a caslte or palace!  It was pretty neat, not as cool as the one in Sintra, but neat in it's own right.  

Look Familiar?  This is the REAL thing!

The stained glass was super inricate and well done.  The coolest part about the caslte was the room of the kings, and they had a color sculpture and name inscription of each king at the top of the walls and it went all the way around a massive room.  

beautiful stained class hourseman

VERY VERY cool Room of the kings!

The view was nothing special, just lots of history and a good day in Segovia!  Of to Andalucia, the south of Spain, to visit Córdoba, Granada, and Seville this weekend, should be a blast!  Sunny and hot!