Of Castles and Aqueducts

You may have noticed that none of my posts so far have been about Spain even though I do currently live there. Well it finally happened. Last weekend I took the opportunity to get out of Madrid without actually leaving the country. Crazy, I know. And I was rewarded with some snow-capped Spanish mountains but we’ll get to that later.

Lauren and I took a tour with Citylife Madrid, which plays host to all sorts of trips, get-togethers and social outings. It’s probably geared toward the typical study abroad student, but, whatever, we wanted to go to Segovia and they were going there. Scene opens to two girls grabbing croissants and coffee and running down the street to the bus.

Destination: Segovia
Travel time: one hour, thirty minutes
Mode of transport: bus, oh dear

First things first, the photo op. It was kind of funny to watch everyone like off of the bus and immediately start clicking photos. Even though the sun really didn’t want us to take pictures. The Alcazar de Segovia is said to be one of the inspirations for Cinderella’s Castle in The Magic Kingdom (another of which is Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria…which John and I will be visiting soon!). And for that reason it will heretofore be referred to as Cinderella’s castle. We quickly surveyed the exterior of the castle and then headed into town for a tour.

The city is itself incredibly old and was named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1985, along the Aqueduct of Segovia. The aqueduct is 818 meters long and is considered the most important Roman civil engineering project in Spain. Over fifteen kilometers long and more than 160 arches! Let’s be honest it has to be one of the most impressive looking ones in the world.

 

But if you were to ask the Spanish, the Romans didn’t actually build the aqueduct, the devil did. You’re telling me devil brought water to the town of Segovia? Well sure. According to the legend, a young girl used to have to climb to the tops of the mountains surrounding the town in search of water and then carry it all the way back home. One day she made a deal with the devil to construct some sort of structure that would prevent her from having to trudge all the way to Timbuktu just to get water. (There’s no record of the conversation, so that’s probably not exactly how she worded it, but I imagine it was something like that). The devil listened to her request and said that he would do it for a price: her soul. The girl agreed but that night when the devil went to work on the aqueduct, she found herself regretting that decision. She prayed to the Virgen de la Fuencisla for help all night long. When the sun rose the next morning, there stood the aqueduct and yet the girl was fine. But how could that be? Well apparently the devil never actually finished the aqueduct; there was one stone missing. And in that space is a statue of the Virgen de la Fuencisla. Leave it to the Spanish to outsmart the devil.

But back to the town and more importantly the castle.

But wait, it isn’t over! From there it was on to Pedraza, a little medieval village that looks like, well, a medieval village. Not only that, but there are only 500 residents and one single road in and out. But most impressive was the view. In case you hadn’t already figured it out, I’m a sucker for mountains, especially cloaked in snow.

 

So there are my first check marks on the rapidly growing list of destinations to discover within Spain. Segovia: check. Pedraza: check. Two down, maybe about twenty five to go…