Segovia!!!

Segovia was so great today! I took hundreds of pictures, so hopefully I can post them soon!

Ana packed us a little snack for mid morning, which was very nice of her :) Vivian and I finally got the trains right this morning! We got to the center early and had to wait around while it was being cleaned. We left the center around 9:20 and rode the bus for about an hour until we got to Segovia. It was nice to just ride around and look out the window at the countryside. I like being in the city, but it was nice to get out for a while. Almost everyone smokes here, and if you walk past a bar, you might as well be smoking yourself! Since I don't smoke, sometimes it makes me feel a little bit sick, so yesterday was really great :) We got to Segovia around 10:15 and drove around for while before we got off the buses and looked around a little bit. We got off right at the Acueductos de Segovia, which are really amazing! Apparently they are not held together by anything adhesive, like cement, but the granite stones are stacked just so, so that they hold up the aqueducts perfectly! We divided into groups of about 10 to take a walking tour. I'm glad I wore my new walking sandals that my mom bought me! They are not something I would usually wear, but they definitely saved my feet!

First we saw a really big church, which was so pretty! We didn't go in, but we took pictures of the outside. There was a statue out in front of it, so I got some pictures of it too. Next we walked through Segovia, which is a lot smaller than Madrid. There were a lot of tourists in some areas, but I got some really nice photos of some of the streets. Next we went to Alcazar, which was a huge castle! Well, huge in my standards :) I kinda pretended I was at Hogwarts hahaha We went out of the roof and there were some really great views! It was pretty hard to hear our tour guide though, because she was really tiny, and there were other tours around us of guides speaking loudly in English, so it was pretty difficult to hear her speaking Spanish.

Next we walked a little more, and then stopped for about 15 minutes in the Plaza Mayor, which is like the center of the town. I took some photos and bought some postcards for my scrapbook, but some people went and bought food, because by that time it was about 12:30pm (lunchtime!). I managed to hold off on the food. After that we took a Paseo por la Ciudad (a walk through the city), and finally we got to La Iglesia de la Vera Cruz, which I really old Romanesque church. It was really interesting and beautiful, and we could see the castle we had just been to on the horizon. The air was much cleaner out there, except for this man who stepped out of the church for a smoke. And when I say he stepped out, I mean literally! He stayed right at the door, and lit up a cigarette! A church that was built in the 1200s!! Wow!! In the US you would never be allowed to do that...

On the way back to Madrid we stopped at a restaurant called Torrecaballeros for La Comida. IT WAS AMAZING!! Mostly the aperitivos (appetizers). There were so many! There was tortilla de patata (potato tortilla), pimientos rojos asados (roasted red peppers), pan tomaca (which was toast with a sort of tomato paste), and croquestas caseras, which was sort of like mashed potatoes with some sort of cheese in them, rolled into balls and fried. They were my favorite! We had some at La Comida on orientation day, but they were tiny and definitely not as good. The rest of the meal was pretty good too. It was pollo asado (roasted chicken) with ensalada mixta (mixed salad). For desert we had ponche de Segovia, which was a sweet pasty. It was delicious! It kinda tasted like raw dough, but it was still great! When I had ponche in Mexico, it was a drink, so I was really surprised by the pastry. With La Comida we had vino (wine) and agua (water haha), and the afterwards we had coffee. Coffee here is espresso. There is no other way to describe it. When you pour yourself a cup of coffee, you put about 1/3 coffee, and 2/3 milk, no joke! But that was by far the best meal I've had since being here. You can see that La Comida is the biggest meal of the day here. For la cena we just had sandwiches. Definitely different from the US, where breakfast and dinner are a lot bigger than they are here.

I dozed off a little on the bus ride back, but who could blame me after that meal! When we got back to Madrid, Vivian and I took the metro back here, and once again took the wrong exit. Woops! I'm sure we'll get it eventually. We relaxed at the apartment for the rest of the day. I still haven't really experienced the night life yet. I've just been way too tired after the days! Maybe I'll to out tonight. Tomorrow we are going to El Rastro, which is a flee market that they only have on Sundays. That should be really fun!