Segovia

Segovia is awesome. It's an old town built on the edge of a cliff. I'm told Toledo is more awesome, we will go and find out.

It's got an old Roman aqueduct that still works and is very impressive. We unfortunately only got to see it from the car window, but I guess thats how it is with kids.

We got there on Saturday lunchtime (normal lunchtime not Spanish lunchtime) and looked for somewhere to park the car. Eventually found a spot that you had to park underground through the use of a lift system. Similar to the car parks in New York except those are up and this was down. By the time we'd parked and got everyone sorted out it was Spanish lunchtime and we hadn't booked anywhere. That meant that in a town renown for its grilled baby lamb and roast suckling pig we had Italian pizza just off the main square (Plaza Mayor - every town has one). Once we'd had lunch we headed to our Airbnb which was in the new town across the river.

A lovely place run by Chelo (who lives downstairs with her daughter and grandson - there could have been more people but we never met them and asking was impossible as they didn't speak English (the grandson couldn't speak at all, he was 20 months old) and we don't really speak Spanish. That afternoon, post naps was spent exploring the little place we were staying and finding the bar for a glass of wine and the obligatory snacks that come with the drinks.

Next morning we packed up and headed into town. This time parking in the large parkade that was supposedly under the cathedral but when we had to walk to the cathedral we realists it wasn't.

From the cathedral which was your standard gothic building (apparently there's more to cathedrals than this but I'm not sure what they are) we headed to the alcazar (aka castle, aka princess castle) which word on the street suggest Walt Disney used to model his castle on. I'm not sure what Walt Disney was doing in Segovia but one look at the castle and you realize it could be true. The castle is now a museum and used to be a military barracks at some point. Knowing Spanish history would help me in explaining some of this but it has a lot to do with the nationalists nationalizing everything (or something like that).

Anyway, after the castle we strolled back to the Plaza and had a coffee and watched most of the last set of the Australian Open final. We missed the last bit but Roger won. From there there was a real need for lunch and based on the chaos that was the previous days lunch we thought the solution would be to go back to the bar we had drinks at the night before as this was out of town and there was a restaurant next door. Well, sort of fail. The bar was packed and the restaurant was super expensive. I think it would have been delightful if one child wasn't screaming and the other climbing over everything because they were exhausted. So after one course (everyone thought we were odd) we bundled everyone into the car and headed home.

Unfortunately the final chapter of the weekend was in relation to returning the car to Atocha station. It is a long chapter that, like Haper Lee's compendium shall remain unwritten.Read more