From the Prado to the Royal Palace

Our last days in Spain were a series of bus and train rides, excursions to the towns of Toledo and Segovia, and wandering through the streets of Madrid.

 La Cathédrale Santa María La Real de La Almudena  

We visited the Prado Museum, got there around ten o’clock in the morning and the line to enter was halfway around the building, so we left, took a bus ride through the modern part of Madrid and was terribly disappointed because it was not nearly as enchanted as the old part. We arrived back at the Prado two hours later and walked right in. For the next three and half hours M died and went to heaven. She was among the old masters of European painters and totally in her own universe. I was in total agony. The 4 hours standing of the previous evening watching the Semana Santa in Plaza Mayor rekindled an old hip injury and the slow walking and more standing in the museum took its toll on my hip. All I wanted to do was to sit somewhere comfortable to diminish the pain. And sat I did from time to time and just let M meander through the marbled-floor halls and appreciate the works of  her perennial favorites,  Rembrandt, Petrus Paulus Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, but we both got to know and like the works of  Goya too. At 5:30 pm I eventually dragged her out of there, she reluctantly agreed, and we paid a quick visit to the San Jerónimo el Real Church across the street from the Prado.        

 Puerta del Sol, Madrid's Time Square

We crossed the busy Paseo del Prado street, allowed ourselves to be swept away by the crowd of pedestrians towards Gran Via and down a quiet side street we found a quaint square and the restaurant La Plateria, named after the square. For the next two or three hours we sat al fresco under the heated umbrellas of the restaurant watching the comings and goings of people either heading home or on their way to the Friday night Holy Week procession through the neighborhood of Huertas just a block or two away from the square. We reflected on the day’s activities and savored Rioja wine and local Madrilène cuisine. The food was generous, the house wine above average, the service swift and the chairs comfortable to allow our tired feet a rest. 

The Royal Palace

 

On the Monday, our last day, we visited the Palacio Real, the Royal Palace, and the Cathedral Santa María La Real de La Almudena next door to the palace. In the Palace, just like in the Prado, I was sternly told that photography was not allowed. Spoilsports! Of course, I still snapped the secret photo here or there. See the selection of chandeliers in the video below. Afterwards he had a late lunch near the Opera House before we returned to our apartment for some rest and packing for the next morning’s departure to Munich, Chicago and then Lexington.   

 

Street scenes from Madrid and inside the Royal Palace

Early evening after the sun has set behind the Sierra de Guadarrama mountains and a hazy darkness has settled upon Madrid, I walked out on the apartment’s balcony for a cigarette before we went out for our last dinner at an Italian trattoria around the corner from our apartment. On the balcony next door a dog sniffled once or twice before an unseen male voice silenced it from behind the wall that divided the balconies. A star flooded sky could faintly be seen in the halo of the city’s lights. In the distance a communications tower’s red light flickered insistently. Somewhere a church bell rang and from the Rondo de Atocha, the main street that leads to Madrid’s major railway station, the high pitch of a motorbike going much faster than the speed limit pierce the tranquil twilight hour.           

 Entrance to Plaza Mayor

Personally I preferred Barcelona to Madrid. I don’t have any specific reason. Maybe it’s Barcelona’s location by the sea or its ancient origins from Roman times. Or maybe it was because our apartment was located where I felt more inclusive of the community with a small tienda de productos frescos, a fruit and vegetable shop, across the street and a community grocer, a butcher, a fishmonger and a panaderia, a bakery, just around the corner, which I paid a visit to every morning for croissants. Maybe it was because I found the Barcelonians friendlier than the Madrilenians and the food and service exceedingly better. But I have to admit Madrid is a very elegant city with beautiful architecture, wide boulevards and a regal attitude which rivals that of Paris, Rome and London. Well, maybe not Paris.

 The Ministry of Justice

Maybe it was because the day we spent in Barcelona’s Barri Gotic neighborhood was one of the best travel days I have ever experienced. I have walked the streets of many medieval cities or towns: Kyoto, Venice, Avignon, Gordes, and Les Baux-de-Provence to name a few, and among the ruins of several Roman settlements in Rome and Pompeii, but I never felt history as vibrant and alive as that day we spent in the Barri Gotic. I know the Barri Gotic was totally revamped and modernized during the early 20^th century, but they kept the old world atmosphere and charm in the narrow streets and hidden squares and the buildings’ brownish patinas reflected the Middle Ages and allowed me to be transported back in time. No other travel day, except maybe that late afternoon we meandered through the streets of the Haute Ville of Vaison-la-Romaine in France with its extremely steep narrow passages, tiny squares, ancient fountains and ruined castle of the Counts of Toulouse, did I experience history so real that it left you melancholy with the thought of having to return to reality.

 The Church of San Manuel and San Benito 

I have no doubt that one day I will return to Spain. I just don’t know when. I have no interest in seeing the Costa del Sol or the islands of Majorca or Ibiza, but Seville, Córdoba, Granada will always beckon and the white hilltop towns of Andalusia in the south and the medieval villages in the Basque Country, Cantabria, Asturias and Galicia in northern Spain must be as beautiful as the French villages of Provence, the Dordogne and northwestern Midi-Pyrénées between Limoges in the north and Cahors in the south.

 

As the old saying goes, dreams are ten a penny. Because I have so many and due to inflation travel dreams have become more expensive, so I will have to save more dollars to make those dreams come true.

The magnificent doors of the Cathedral Santa María La Real de La Almudena  

Adiós Espana o hasta pronto!

 

Spain in Summary

 

 

 

 

 

A Holy Week Procession in Madrid

They call it a procession, a march, but it is more like a dance to the beat of a brass band. In a Spanish Semana Santa, a Holy Week procession, the candles and wooden crosses carriers in their penitential robes, capes and conical hats, and the accompanied women, mostly dressed in black and wearing the traditional Spanish mantilla head dress, do their best, to march to the band’s “militarized” music, as if it was playing Johann Strauss Sr.’s, Radetzky Marsch Opus 228, but the heavy pasos, the priceless religious floats of artwork, sway to the waltzing rhythm of the costaleros or “sack men”, the carriers of these floats, as if they are the upper class of the late 19th Century Vienna dancing to the music of Johann Strauss Jr.’s Blue Danube at an imperial ball in the Schönbrunn Palace. No wonder in some regions of Spain the pasos, procession, this waltzing dance, is called a bailadosto, a ballet.

(Watch the video at the end of the post and see what I am talking about.)

 At the beginning of the long wait

 

On a bright, sunny, but cool day, only a few hours after our arrival in Madrid from Barcelona, and after a visit to Mercado de San Miguel for tapas we discovered that the Semana Santa procession was to pass through the Plaza Mayor, which was adjacent to the Mercado (food market.) We exited the tapas marketplace at around 5:30 pm and by accident saw that police were preparing for the procession. We entered the Plaza and found a table at one of the restaurants inside the plaza to kill time. For the next hour or more I made a big deal out of drinking a glass or two of white wine and munching on a bowl of Manzanilla olives and M savoring a cup of tea to while away the time until the arrival of the procession. Because we were occupying prime table space the waiters constantly came around to ask if we wanted dinner. Even though we were satiated from the tapas, in hind sight we should have ordered a light “tourist” dinner, which is all that the restaurants on the plaza were good for, because it turned out to be a very, very long night. By 7:30 pm the police started to cordon off a small area inside the plaza in readiness for the procession but the whole path was not cordoned off. So we abandoned our table and joined the crowd right in front of the precession’s path in a prime standing location. And we waited!

 

As the evening grew older, a late winter coolness descended upon an ever increasing crowd, a full moon slowly rose above the Islesia Santa Cruz located just outside the historic plaza. We felt like pimento stuffed Spanish olives packed in a jar.

And we waited! Asking any one of the thousands around us what time the procession would come through the plaza was useless. We did. No one knew. No even the police, who was in communication with other police along the procession's path via cellphones and walkie-talkies did not know. They kept telling anyone who asked, “in one hour.” M and I couldn't quite understand this situation. How on earth could they not know? They have done these processions before, year after year, since around year 1530 AD, maybe skipping a few processions during wars or revolutions. And Spain has its fair share of those. I would find out later why no one knew the exact time.

 

Standing there with time to think aplenty, I also found it rather strange why the procession’s path was cleared so many hours ahead of time without them actually putting up any form of physical barriers like they do in New York for the many parades that that city hosts. The result was really hilarious. The police would clear a piece of road through the plaza and once the 2 or 3 policeman moved on people would cross the opened path constantly and over a short period of time the masses would encroach upon the clearing and then the police would come along again and push the crowd back. And this snaking path and concertina movement would continue for at least 2 hours or more. Simple mobile steel barriers could have kept the clearing open and they would have had to do it only once. I could only guess that in case of a sudden frightful event the lack of barriers could prevent people from being squashed and injured against a ridged object. Or the fact that once the procession passed there was no cleanup to be done.

 

Eventually, shortly after 9 pm we heard the first sounds of a marching band nearing the plaza. Ten to fifteen minutes later and with a great sigh of relief, the procession entered Plaza Mayor through the Calle Cdad. Rodrigo entrance. Leading the procession were the Nazarenos, the ones wearing the penitential robes with conical hats (in America you would associate this outfit with the Ku Klux Klan, but in this case they were all in purple.) They were followed by a marching band which tried their best, but was sometimes out of tune. Then came a group of women dressed in black and wearing the familiar Spanish mantilla head dress, then more Nazarenos carrying wooden crosses, followed by the candle carriers in white robes and purple capes. Shortly after 10 pm the “Pasos” Jesus Nazareno “El Pobre” (The Procession of Our Father Jesus of Nazarene, the Poor) appeared.

 

It was then that I understood why no one knew the exact time the floats would arrive. The procession was not marching to anyone’s clock. It was marching to its own rhythm. The portion of the procession leading the first float took an hour to pass us. It took another half hour for the first float to move 200 feet and the whole procession took more than 2 hours to go through the plaza. The costaleros, the float carriers, often rested and the floats were accompanied by medical staff. It was obvious that these floats were very heavy. Each float that passed us was carried by about 60 men. The first float was followed by another band, more Nazarenos, more ladies in black and then came the second float, the María Santísima del Dulce Nombre, (The Holy Mary with the sweet name) which was followed by a third band.

 The entrance of the Holy Mary's float 

The whole procession was an unbelievable spectacle! It is not easy to describe a Semana Santa because it really is something that needs to be experienced, visually and physically. The scene could not have been more dramatic. Inside Plaza Mayor, encircled by the historic red buildings with hundreds of white framed windows and an illuminated colonnade below, a transparent ceiling of a blackened sky, watched over by a full moon, and surrounded by thousands of spectators, the procession was absolutely amazing and we felt very privileged to have been part of this celebrated cultural festival. The visually striking and physically exhausting extravaganza was worth the long wait. It is seldom that when  one travels to foreign places and happens upon a festival and see something extraordinary one knows that what is being experienced at that moment is a once in a life time experience. This was one of those times.  

“Pasos” Jesus Nazareno “El Pobre” (The Procession of Our Father Jesus of Nazarene, the Poor)

It was way after midnight and we were totally exhausted. Cold, with stiff joints and on swollen feet we staggered our way toward Puerta del Sol’s metro station.  The place was packed with people, but luckily there was a metro worker at the ticket vending machine to expedite the process and the next train for us came soon thereafter. Sol was thankfully only three metro stops away from our destination, the Atocha metro station.

 

Close by the Atocha station we found an open-till-late fast food place that looked dodgy with napkins and other trash lying in the floor, but its la fresco tables were still packed with youngsters. African street vendors and half-drunken beggars were standing around outside, but we took a gamble because we were thirsty! Behind a long serving bar counter a large fellow with a greasy ponytail and a wild beard greeted us in a friendly smiley manner. We ordered two café con leches. We savored the coffee sip after sip and we both agreed it was quite a good cup o’Joe. Satisfied we took the short walk from there to our rented apartment. 

The next day was supposed to be one of the highlights of our trip, as if the Semana Santa was not already a major highlight.

The next day we would be going to the Prado Museum, not just Spain’s but one of Europe’s premier art museums, to have our visual senses overwhelmed by the likes of Diego Valazques, El Greco, Goya, Pieter Paul Rubens, Raphael, Titian, Rembrandt, Hieronymus Bosch and many more.  

But tomorrow was another day. Tonight we needed to crash and get some sleep. It was a very long and eventful day.  (Also see the post Madrid and the Pickpockets.)          



 

 



 

María Santísima del Dulce Nombre, (The Holy Mary with the sweet name)

Madrid & The Pickpockets

 

My Madrid experience felt at most haphazard.  A classic hit-or-miss, unfortunate-or-lucky kind of experience. It may be because we were in and out of the city on daytrips and no continuous stay. It sometimes happens on these “we are on a vacation, but there is no rest for the weary” vacations. I am usually fairly relaxed and thoroughly enjoy what I am seeing, hearing, and experiencing on these overseas outings, but unfortunately Madrid denied me that important element of relaxation.  Hence, my mixed bag of memories of Madrid.  

Usually one of the first things we do in an unknown city, after we completed the business of finding our apartment, meeting with the owner, and taking possession, are to take a ride on a red City Sightseeing bus. They are in most world cities these days. Tickets are relatively expensive, but I consider it value for money because I feel it is the quickest way to learn the lay of the land, so to speak, or discover areas of a city I did not previously considered, and to get a general “vibe” for the new city.

We found one of the bus’s stops near our apartment and as M was ready to board the bus, a girl bumped into her, cleverly threw a scarf over M’s backpack and tried to unzip the back flap. M immediately felt it and recognized what was happening and quickly pulled away and turned around. The girl seeing her pickpocket plan is not going to come to any fruition, quickly disappeared into the pedestrian traffic at a busy street corner.

 

About 30 minutes into our ride we got off the bus at The Temple of Debod, an Egyptian temple near the royal palace complex. From there we would walk to the palace’s garden and other plazas around the palace to consume the many statues and building facades of the area. But while casually strolling near the gardens, two girls, I would guess 18 – 20 year olds, in a wide open area with many benches on the edge of the wide walkway, crashed into M from both sides, sandwiching her, while one tried to get to her backpack. This time M violently got out of the sandwich by twisting her body away and the two girls ran away.

The site of the second pickpocket attempt near the royal palace. I think the audacity of the second attempt in an open space in broad daylight while other people actually sat on benches and watched the whole ordeal unfold and did nothing surprised me most about the incident.

The first and the second attempted pickpocketing happened in a blink of an eye, not more than 2 seconds I would guess from contact to escape. Twice targeted in the first hour of being on Madrid’s streets? Not the best introduction to a new city. Coincidence? Or was there a message?  From then onwards M swapped her backpack for a small on-the-belt pouch. Luckily there were no further pickpocket attempts during our trip. But these attempts had negative consequences on the rest our vacation in that I was never really relaxed thereafter, looking over my shoulder all the time.

We hopped back onto the bus and a few stops later we found ourselves in the heart of Madrid, the Puerta del Sol Plaza, where we hopped off again. The plaza was packed with people and a quick look around confirmed that it really is a nondescript place devoid of any real beauty or interest. Very much like New York’s Time Square; nothing more than a traditional place to get together, a hub. Still jittery after our pickpocket experiences, I however, wanted to get out of there and directed M in the direction of the nearby Plaza Mayor, Madrid’s other famous square.              

 Scenes of Plaza Mayor

By now it was late afternoon, tapas time, and we found the perfect place for it at the Mercado de San Miguel adjacent to the Plaza Mayor. Oh My! I have never seen so many delicate, appetizing, mouth-watering dishes together under one roof. Pure food porn! I have been to many food markets on my travels, I love to go to them. I have drooled in Florence’s iconic Mercato di San Lorenzo and in the irresistible Les Halles D’Avignon. I have bought vegetables for a made-from-scratch Bolognaise sauce at the massive street market in La Spezia, Italy, and sharp cheese and black olive bread on the Tuesday morning market in the tiny hilltop village of Gordes, France, and ate strange fried balls and other unknown delicacies on Kuala Lampur’s Jalan Petaling, but Mercado de San Miguel was a culinary feast beyond them all, both on the eye and the palate. Obviously we changed tapas into dinner and unbeknown did the right thing.

 Mercado de San Miguel

Upon exiting the mercado we rested for a few minutes on some concrete balls just outside the entrance and contemplated our next move. We were a bit tired from the travels from Barcelona that morning, but I had plans to join thousands of other Medrileans to watch a Semana Sante.  Suddenly several policemen on motorbikes stopped right next to us and started to cordon off the road and the entrance to Plaza Mayor in front of us. We were aware of the terrorists attack on Brussels airport 2 days earlier, and although not terribly alarmed I asked one of the policeman what is going on.

“Procession” he said.

“Alright!” I said to M and immediate got my phone out and googled which procession was to walk through Plaza Mayor.

 A picturesque little square near Plaza Mayor

It turned out to be a case of being at the right place at the right time for one of the highlights of our Spanish expedition. What a fortuity it was to see a traditional Spanish Semana Sante, a Holy Week tradition.  These processions, a nearly 500-year old tradition, through hilltop villages, coastal towns and the riverside cities of Spain, by highly committed Catholics, some wearing tunics and robes with conical shaped hooded hats and their faces masked, others playing in the band or carry the religious floats, are still revered and going strong among modern-day Spaniards.

More about that in a next post. Click here of The Holy Week Procession in Madrid.

 Plaza Mayor

 

Fruit Pies in Mercado de San Miguel

Sunday in Segovia

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 12^th 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 18^th 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