Finally, after a few weeks of touring Madrid and adjusting to the Spanish lifestyle, I had a chance to travel outside of the city. On Saturday, my program had scheduled a group trip to Segovia, which was awesome because it was all paid for in our program fees.
At about 8 in the morning the entire group (which I think is about 42 students), as well as Guillermina (the resident director for the program who is actually a Spanish professor at UW-Madison) and her family and our tour guide boarded the bus. When we arrived in Segovia, we were given about an hour or so to explore on our own and find our morning coffee fix. Some of my program friends and I found a crepe café only to find out that they weren’t serving crepes anymore. Needless to say, I was disappointed.
After our break we met back up in the plaza to learn about the famous Roman aqueduct that runs through the plaza as well as take a few pictures. The structure is absolutely stunning in both appearance and history. One of the most interesting facts that I learned about the aqueduct was that it was built without anything holding the structure together; the architects built it by simply stacking the stones to form the aqueduct.
We made our way through the city led by our very informative tour guide. We went through the old Jewish quarter and made our way to the main plaza and the Catedral de Segovia. We were able to take a few hours for lunch, so a couple of friends and I found a cute little restaurant that had a ‘menu del día,’ which is a pretty common thing all over Spain. For about 12 Euros we were able to each get a three-course meal plus a drink and bread, which is a really good deal, and the food was all very authentic. I’m not entirely sure what everything was that I had, but it was all very delicious.
After lunch we continued our tour in the cathedral, which was almost overwhelming. There were rooms, altars, and ceilings, all with intricate detailing in stone and gold. After spending some time there, we moved on to the Alcazar de Segovia, which is the castle. It sat majestically on a hill on the outskirts of Madrid and had some incredible history. The entire trip was fantastic, and Segovia was a charming town that I would highly recommend to anyone that has the time.
