Tag: mountains

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…

Mountains and Coastlines and Villages, Oh My: Exploring the Welsh Countryside

I suppose I should start with introductions.

Everyone this is Wally; Wally, everyone. Wally was my companion on the rolling hills and gentle coasts of the Welsh countryside. And after witnessing my first car accident literally within 2 minutes of picking up my buddy here (key word here is “witnessing”. Don’t worry, Wally kept me very safe) and some arguments over the navigation system we got along swimmingly. So, fueled with coffee, I headed off on the open road.

Originally I was going to head through the gut of Snowdonia National Park; however, after a brief study of the map, I decided it made more sense to tackle the coastline first and hit Snowdonia on my way back. It turns out that Snowdonia is rather big so I crisscrossed in and out of it for much of my journey to Aberystwyth, my destination for the day. Anyway, first stop of the drive was Mumbles Pier because how could I not stop at a place called Mumbles Pier? I found the first of many houses that I could see myself living in, a nice boat to sail around the ocean blue and a lighthouse to always lead me home. What more could I ask for?

As for the rest of the drive, I’ll just let the pictures do the talking.

I made it into town just in time to see the castle (well castle ruins) against the nighttime sky. The castle was nice and all but it was the the view from the castle and the way that the color of the sky played off of the ocean that really caught me.

It was my goal to have some fresh seafood while I was on the coast and boy was that the right call. I popped in to Gwesty Cymru (google translate tells me that that means Hotel Wales) and had the sea bream. I don’t know what sea bream is, but it was absolutely delightful.

New day, new destination. Which means more time with my good friend Wally. My final stop was to be in Bethesda/Bangor but there were many stops to make along the way, to admire small towns, rolling waves and snow-capped mountains.

One such small town was the seaside village of Portmeirion. Architect Clough Williams-Ellis purchased it in 1925 and spent the next 50 years developing it. His intent was to show how a beautiful site could be developed without spoiling it. The resulting village looks like a little slice of Italy right there in the middle of Wales, overlooking the Traeth Bach tidal estuary and surrounded by a sub-tropical forest called Y Gwyllt. It may have taken him 50 years to develop but I think the final result was well worth the wait.

image
I’m actually jumping in this picture although it looks like I’m summoning the heavens. It rained the entire next day. I can only blame myself…

After a pint at the very cosy, first licensed pub in Wales, I finally made it to my lodging which for the first (and only) time on this trip was an Airbnb. The lack of wifi was rather disappointing but holy cow did the view make up for it.

 

I had a long day ahead of me and coffee was a necessity so I stopped in at The Alpine Coffee Shop and made friends with a gorilla. It probably helped that he wasn’t real because monkeys aren’t usually my thing. But something about this shop converted me into such a softie that I wanted to go up and give that fake monkey a hug. Must have been something in the latte. Continue reading Mountains and Coastlines and Villages, Oh My: Exploring the Welsh Countryside