So, we managed to make it to Segovia on Saturday.  We actually got up earlier than we needed to and found ourselves at the train station with 45 minutes to wander around.  I discovered that the overpriced Burger King in the train station, which advertises that it sells breakfast, does not actually open until 10:30am on Saturdays.  Mirror World.  A pastry shop sold a dreamy egg and ham croissant, though, which I was mostly able to order in Spanish.

Historic Segovia is a walled city with a functioning Roman aqueduct that, so we have heard, was still in municipal use until the 1980s.  It’s an amazing and awe-inspiring structure to see.

The great aqueduct

The acqueduct carried water over/through the city walls, which are also intact.

The city wall

We tried to follow the aquedect until it terminated but it wasn’t that clear, so we just wandered around the narrow streets of the city for a while.  For a town with a heavy tourist trade, Segovia is surprisingly unpretentious.  The shopping streets were almost completely free of sovenier shops and mostly filled with practical stores for locals — grocery shops, cooking stores, lamp shops, clothing stores.  We picked up a little pizza pan for cooking in our small covertable microwave/oven.

Eventually, we found Plaza Mayor and the The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Ascention and of St. Frutos, the last gothic cathedral constructed in Spain.

The Gothic Cathedral

It was built in the 1500s on the ruins of another cathedral that was burned down in a war I’m not familiar with.  We couldn’t take pictures inside, of course, but we were able to take pictures of the cloister, which dates from the 1100s and 1200s, I believe, and was moved over stone-by-stone from the original burned church.

The cathedral cloister

After visiting the cathedral, we settled down for a three-course high-end Spanish lunch.  We’d been planning for the splurge, and we picked a nice historic inn that had converted its courtyard into a restaurant.  The food was very good, though the soup and dessert courses outshone the entrees.  I think this is because we didn’t order the pork — we’ve been getting just a bit sick of ham.  After we got home, I double-checked our book and was reminded that Segovia is renowned for its suckling pig.  D’oh!  Also, we think that I may have been served the wine that went with BOTH meals, since Terran refused his.  The wine never seemed to run out, and I was just a bit drunk by the time we left.  Still, it was some of the best red wine I’ve had yet.

After lunch, we hit the castle of Alcazar.

Alcazar viewed from below

Interestingly, the castle had no restrictions about photographs at all, so we had a field day.  They had an armory exhibit that was much smaller and less spectacular than the one at Palacio Real, but it was still cool, and I took the opportunity to get a few pictures of armor.

Jousting armor on models

We finished up our exploration of the castle by climbing to the top of the tower, which was used as a prison in its day.

A prison door in Alcazar tower

We had a bit of time and energy left after that, since we’d schedule the last train home.  We took a switchback path down from the city walls and visited a 12th century romanesque church that featured an inner sanctum used by Knights Templar for all-night vigils.

Inner sanctum

We made our way back to town via a nice public park that kept us cool and refreshed (as refreshed as we could be because now we were REALLY exhausted).

We have devoted today to sleeping in and noodling around on the computer.