Present day
Sunday evening and the very last of the day’s light is
disappearing fast. From somewhere nearby I hear shots being fired. It is not unusual
for around here even though it is not deer season yet. This time it sounds like
someone is shooting target. Getting ready for deer season? Or maybe the person
just wanted to spend some bonding time with his/her rifle, clean it, oil it, put
it back in the safe. Each to its own.
But sitting here in a rocking chair on the back porch after
dinner with a cup of coffee laced with a little whiskey, I recall our trip to
Segovia, Spain, a few Sundays ago. Segovia. It is a word that rolls so effortless
from the tongue. Segovia. It was the best of times it was the worst of times.
Sunday, Late March
2016
I gave us 1 hour to get from Atocha metro train station in
the south of Madrid to Chamartin train station in the north of the city for our
connecting train to Segovia, which is about 92 km north of Madrid. Arriving at
the metro the information board informed me that the next train will arrive in
10 minutes. That was not good news. Usually you don’t have to wait more than
2-3 minutes for the next train. But this was a Sunday morning! It escaped me. Less
commuters means less trains running. The second miscalculation materialized on
the metro train ride. It took much longer than what I anticipated and we arrived
at Chamartin with about 5 or 8 minutes to spare. From the underground it was a
mad dash up a set of stairs and then up escalators. M, somewhere between a jog and a very fast
walk, was doing her best to match my brisk walk. Passing a shop on the top level I asked a man dressed
in what looked like a train service uniform, the way to the Renfe platforms.
“That way” he said and pointed to another walkway to our left. Above his head
against the wall an electronic information board showed that the 10:15 train to
Segovia departs from platform 3. We ran down another escalator, found platform
3’s entrance gate and then had to go down another set of stairs to get to the
platform and the train. There was no time to check coach numbers so we just
entered the train through the doors nearest to us. A few milliseconds later the
train's doors closed and it pulled out of the station. Wow! In the nick of time!
Windows inside Segovia's Alcazar
Once I got my breath back and looked around I noticed that this train inside did not look like an AVE train. There was no seat numbers and the seats… oh Shit! We were on the wrong train. How could this have happened? I was convinced the information board said platform 3 for Segovia. Walking down the aisle to find us some seats I asked a group of late teens if this train was going to Segovia. I got confirmation that it was. It turned out that we were on a Cercanias rail service train, a slow regional train that stops at all stations and not on the fast speed AVE rail train. When I looked at the electronic board I never looked at the train number, only at the destination and time. There was no time. There must have been more than one train leaving at the same time to the same destination. What a coincidence? My mistake, but as I sat there I also realized we would have missed the AVE train seeing that we barely made this train before its departure and that the platforms for the AVE trains were further down the station. (I learned that upon our return to Chamartin that evening.)
I got up and looked at a route map just behind our seats and
looked for Segovia, but there was no Segovia on the map. I figured out from the
map that we were on the C-8 train line and this line only went as far as Cercedilla. I
asked a woman in the booth across from us whether the train goes to Segovia and
she said yes it does. But Segovia is not on the map, I said. She said that we had
to change to another train at the end of the line to go to Segovia. Great!
Segovia's Plaza Mayor anchored by its late-Gothic cathedral
To make a long story short, we did change trains at
Cercedilla and eventually arrived in Segovia about 2 hours later than planned and
at a different train station on the side of town we didn’t wanted to be. To
make matters worse, as we walked to the solitary taxi at the station it pulled
out with passengers and we had to settle for an inner-city bus to Plaza Mayor,
the city’s main square. Luckily the bus station was near the train station and
the bus came within a few minutes. Not the best of starts to our day, but our
spirits were still high. There was no
way to make up the lost time, and after a quick walk around the cathedral, the
last Gothic cathedral to be built in the Spanish style in Spain, we skipped the inside
and walked up hill towards Segovia’s Alcazar and into a cold and stiff breeze
coming of the snowcapped mountains on the city’s doorstep.
Segovia's Alcazar with King John's tower under maintenance.
The Alcazar or castle is situated on top of a rocky outcrop high
above the confluence of two rivers and was one of the inspirations for Disney’s
Cinderella Castle. And following the lay of the land, a triangular outcrop
sticking out into the confluence, the castle’s shape is unique, like that of a
ship’s bow. It originally was a wooden Roman fort and then a Moorish fort before the current stone
structure was built in the late 12th Century. Since then it has been
a royal palace, a prison, an artillery college, a military academy and now a
museum. The castle has a long history
and it played an important role in the history of Spain, especially the Kingdom
of Castile. It was in this castle that Spain’s most historic queen, Isabella I
of Castile grabbed the thrown from her sister Joanna. It was in Segovia that
she married Fernando II of Aragon and together these two completed the Reconquista, taking Spain back from the
Muslims, which laid the foundation for a unified Spain, and they also ordered their Muslim
and Jewish subjects to convert to Catholicism or leave the country during the
Spanish Inquisition. This was the same Isabella that funded Christopher
Columbus’s 1492 voyage to “discover” the New World.
The Alcazar is a
very interesting museum. Inside it reminded me quite a bit of the Château de
Blois in France, but with less furniture. The Alcazar was not Versailles, nor the
royal palace in Madrid. No over-the-top gilded fixtures, virtually no paintings,
no gilded mirrors, none of the usual extravagance you get in 18th
Century castles and palaces. This was far more basic, more brute stone and good
artisanship. This was pre-Renaissance and pre-Baroque styles. This was Mujédar and
later additions were Gothic. A pleasant surprise though was the beautiful
ornate ceilings and the fresco paintings. The suits of armor and pieces of
artillery scattered throughout the rooms imparted a real sense history
to the castle.
After our visit to the Alcazar we wandered along the backstreets of Segovia, sticking to the sunny side of the town, sometimes inside the ramparts, sometimes outside, slowly making our way in the direction of the aqueduct.
At the tiny Plazuela del Socorro we had to choose. Go left
and stay within the city ramparts or go right and exit the city.
We went right and exited the city through the impressive
Puerta de San Andreas.
At one stage we found a tranquil spot with a bench beneath
trees that still needed to sprout blooms for spring, on the edge of a cliff with
views over the river and mountains in the distance. We lingered for a while,
nearby water trickled from a fountain and then ran down a tiny moat on the side
of the road. We were the only people there. It was rather amazing to have this
quiet spot totally to ourselves.
Segovia's Skyline
Continuing on we found a modern passage through the city
walls that led us to Calle Juan Bravo and the Plaza de Medina del Campo with
the statue of Juan Bravo (I guess the original Johnny Bravo) and the Romanesque church
of St. Martin with its soaring belfry and arched and columned portico.
Shortly afterwards we had our worse eating experience in Spain.
To get out of the narrow streets where the cold breezes chilled us and also to
rest our tired feet, we came upon a windless sunny spot, a small el fresco restaurant between two
buildings, the Bodega del Barbero. After a long wait for service,
the food was absolutely terrible. M’s fish was half baked, the French fries
oily and cold and the bread felt as if it was only recently removed from a fridge. My
‘breastfed’ lamb chops was so fatty I left half uneaten. When we complained the
waitress was apologetic in words but her gesture indicated she couldn’t care
less.
Come to think of it, none of the food we ate in Spain was really
memorable, some meals were better than others. The better meals were in
Barcelona and on our last night in Madrid at La Diavoletta, but mostly they were just acceptable. So unlike our
trips through France or Italy. I can still recall our dinner in the Auberge Nicolas Flamel in Paris, or the
gourmet food of Le Cheval Rouge in
Chisseaux or even further back to an excellent dinner at La Cicala, that lovely agriturismo
where we stayed for 3 days high above the Bay of Poets in La Spezia, Italy.
In this picture one can get a good idea of how tall the aqueduct is. No mortar/cement was used. It is kept together by the sheer weight of the stones.
From our awful lunch experience it was a short walk to the
jewel of Segovia, the best preserved Roman structure in Spain, the aqueduct.
Seeing it for the first time I was quite taken aback. I never realized it was
so huge. Very impressive! We lingered in the area for quite some time. I
climbed the many steps to the top for panoramic views while M wandered around
the square down below before we caught a bus from near the aqueduct to the AVE
train station. This time I got it right and we sped back to Madrid at high
speed.
The stairs to the top of the aqueduct
At Chamartin station we did not take the metro back to Atocha station, but a Cercanias train, an impromptu decision, an added adventure. This is the train we should have taken that morning! With only 4 stops between the two
major stations we arrived at Atocha 12 minutes later.
Romanesque bell towers seen through the top arches of the aqueduct
Notwithstanding the morning’s dilemma of the wrong train and
late arrival and the terrible lunch, our Sunday in Segovia turned out to
be one of my best days in Spain. I have countless good memories of meandering
through the charming stone labyrinth of Segovia or our walk all along the ramparts, the visit to the Alcazar, the
vistas of snowcapped mountains and of being overawed by the imposing aqueduct.
Far below the Segovia Alcazar, the Church of the True Cross, the Iglesia Vera Cruz, the round/12-sided shrine patterned after the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, was built by the Knights Templars before 1208. They stood guard here over a small piece of wood that they claimed was a fragment of Jesus’s cross. The relic now resides in a church in a nearby village.
Shortly after we arrived on Plaza Mayor we notice they are preparing for another Semana Santa procession outside the cathedral.
Inside the Alcazar
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