Segovia!

Segovia was the first place we traveled out of Madrid to see and WE LOVED IT!!! It was one of our favorite places! We took a train to Segovia and then a bus to the main part of the city. Right when we stepped off the bus this is what we saw:
The Roman Aqueduct! A little history in case you are interested: Segovia used to be a Roman military base and needed water. So they built a nine-mile aqueduct to bring water from the Río Frío to the city and then to the Roman castle, known today as Aláczar (pictured below... WAY below :)). The exposed section is 2,500 feet long and 100 feet high, has 118 arches and was made from 20,000 granite blocks WITHOUT ANY MORTAR!!! Crazy, huh?! I was a little leery when I had to walk under it! :)
That is Tamara and Brian with us... we don't know the person in the pink shirt :)... ps. ignore my ugly pants! We thought we weren't allowed to wear shorts in the cathedral so I wore the only capris I brought and they are long and it was HOT so I rolled them up! :)
We just loved all the narrow streets and cute buildings!
We found this teeny tiny door as we were wandering around so I had to see what was inside! It was a really small museum that was closing for the day so we kept on wandering until we found...
Segovia's Cathedral! It was SO COOL!


It had the COOLEST ceiling!
Tim outside the little courtyard
Tim inside the little courtyard :)
They had cases FULL of crazy keys! I just wanted to break open the case and go try them out on some of the very huge and very old doors that were off limits to tourists! :) I don't know why I have this obsession with keys and keyholes... I think they are just mysterious and I love them!
There was a chapel and "choir" in the center and then all these little rooms around them. There were all sorts of paintings and statues inside each room. We thought we weren't allowed to take pictures inside at first and we discovered later that we just couldn't use flash! So, since we went to all of the little rooms when we first got there we don't have any pictures of the insides of them at this cathedral. They had some pretty creepy things inside though, it just seemed sort of dark inside some of them, so it was probably better that way... we got pictures of the really cool things anyway!
Overlooking the city of Segovia. It reminds me of The Princess Bride or some medieval movie.I can just see knights on horseback riding into the city! I just LOVED it there!
Alcázar! Isn't it COOOOL!? It is the castle that Walt Disney patterned his castles after!
Oh man! I just LOVED Segovia! (take note of the tallest part that is flat with all the *merlons and crenels* (aka spikes)... we got to go up there!) Oh, by the way, our camera RAN OUT OF BATTERIES at this point! :( And Tamara and Brian's camera was almost out of memory space! So, we only got a few pictures of the inside of the castle :( We were glad they were willing to share some of their memory space with us! :)
He he! Here we are poking our heads through the *crenels*! This is on the side of the castle.
I was trying to crouch a little so you could for sure see the entire horse! :) Tamara and I liked this one the best because he had a floofy feather on his head and then the guy who took our picture cut it off! :( Lame!
We tried taking out the battery in our camera and then turning it back on again and it worked... only long enough to take one more picture! :( But, I thought this was really cool, so I'm glad I got it!
I just love this one! If you look reeeeeally reeeeeeally hard you can see Tim and I at the bottom! :) This was one of my favorite castles that we have seen here in Spain. Mostly because it was our first and because it actually had furniture from way back when. I guess all the other castles we saw were too old or something but they hardly had any furniture. :( I would show you all the loverly pictures we took of all the cool furniture but remember how our camera was out of batteries at this point? :(
Here we are at the top! We had to climb what felt like FOREVER and poor Tim kept having to stop in the stuffy stairwell with his pregnant wife! I am SO GLAD I have him and that he takes SUCH GOOD care of me! :)
We took this on our way out of the city. Goodbye Segovia! :(


* I wanted to give the spikes a real name so Tim helped me look it up on line and the crenels are "the gap or open space between two merlons" and the merlons are "the solid portion between two crenels" both of which make up a battlement... hmm...interesting!