Segovia!

Part of the tuition I pay here goes to two day trips, that provide students with more culture and history information about Spain. The first one was two weeks ago and it was to Segovia. It was about an hour and a half away on a bus. The drive there was interesting because being right in the middle of the city it's kinda hard to know what the land actually looks like.. some of it looks like Colorado, some small mountains, sort of dry, some pine trees. When we were there we had a whole day of things to do including seeing some awesome castles and eating their famous pork.
The first thing we did was go to Alcazar, an amazing and HUGE castle. Now it is true that I haven't see a lot of castles but still it was really big. Everything I've seen in movies with castles is sort of true too. It was built to be a fortress, located high on the hill with a wall around it and the rest of the little town. Seriously a big wall with a big door around the whole city! and this enormous castle!

So you go through the big entrance and through the town and arrive at the castle. You cross a little bridge with a quite a big drop underneath and in the castle you go.

Inside also looked like what you could expect from a castle. A courtyard and tons of rooms, ornately decorated with big doors and lots of art work, well lots of family photos. I would recommend checking out my facebook album on this because there are just too many picture and sooo many details. A few highlights were definitely the ceilings. They are SO beautiful! And then the rooms for like dinners and gatherings, where there is just a ton of paintings of all the kings and queens and just everything you would need to have in a royal palace. It was amazing the stuff they had like the tables and chairs and throws and desks and for how old they were they still look impressive. The tapestries were very neat and complex as well. There were a lot hanging from the walls, again with just different depictions of the royal family and some religions ones. In the royal bed room the walls were covered in tapestries so it wouldn't be too cold. There was an elegant canopy for the bed because there was always at least two guards in the room at all time. The view looking out of the castle was pretty amazing, you could see the whole little town of Segovia and then on the other side you could just see for miles the fields and everything, you would definitely be able to see enemies coming!!

From there we went to town and had a little time off before lunch. We walked around saw the main square, saw the some buildings, grabbed a coffee. Then we went over to lunch. The famous lunch of Segovia is "Roast Suckling Pig." Cute name right? Well it was quite something. I don't know how exactly they cooked it but it came out... the whole piglet all cooked and ready to go. Crispy outside and juicy inside. The fun was in the presentation. Come out the entire piglet, head and hooves and all. They set it on the table and grab a plate. They then proceed to smash the plate into the piglet cutting it nicely into sections. The last cut is right through the middle of the head and then the plate is dropped on the floor - Cheers.
After our huge lunch we went to the Roman Aqueducts - also simply amazing. So big and no cement... how how how how how?! After that we left to drive a little outside of Segovia to another royal estate, not exactly who lives there or what it was for, someone said it's just the royalty's summer home or something. But it was also very neat and had a huge gardened area!