Segovia

This is the retablo inside the Parral monastery
This is a picture of the Alcazar castle

The Aquaduct
The Cathedral
Me and my friend I met in the Alcazar castle
Vera Cruz church
Unfinished work on the front of the Parral monastery

So this weekend we ran off to Segovia, a beautiful little town about an hour out of Madrid. The first thing we saw when we got there, which is like the gateway to old Segovia, was the Roman Aquaduct. This aquaduct was built, and is still standing today, without any sort of binding agent such as cement. Isn´t that amazing! I thought it was. Then we walked on and eventually the cathedral came into the picture. I stopped to take a few pictures of the outside, but Dani was complaining like only a 12 year old boy can that he was hungry and grumping around so we tried to find somewhere to eat. After that we started out at the Alcazar, which is an old castle that was used when Isabella was the queen, and some time before her. It was awesome just to see all the beautiful craftwork, things that you never see today, nonetheless in Utah, or even the United States. After touring the main part of the castle we decided to climb up to the tower. Bad idea! Oscar counted and it was 152 steps or something like that up to the top, and they weren´t even normal steps, they were like two steps in one. By the time I reached the top, I was out of breath and sore, and it smelled like cow pucky, but the view was beautiful and only obscured by a mob of asians trying to take a picture with 30 cameras. Luckily we decided to leave before they tried to make their way down becuase the staircase is quite small. Then we went to the cathedral, which I can only tell you was marvelous because they didn´t let us take pictures inside. There are around 30 apses, each with their own gold plated retablo(thats in Spanish and I´m too lazy to look it up, but its like a wall that is decorated and carved) and other interesting artifacts. I probably could have spent a long time there if it hadn´t been so cold, having only a few windows and being completely made of stone. Then we headed of to a church called Vera Cruz, or True Cross, because years ago it recieved what was believed to be a part of the cross, and the name stuck. This church was built by the knights templar....interesting, and has twelve sides. The structure is meant to copy that of the jerusalem temple I believe, but it is mostly like one church inside of the other. When you go inside there is a corridor al the way around and then in the middle there is a two level smaller structure. It was really interesting, and I kind of felt like I should be in a Dan Brown novel or something and be trying to find an old treasure there, but I don´t think there is one...too bad. Then we went to an old monastery called Parral, which was beautiful. We had an old munk with horrible teeth show us around, but I didn´t really pay attention to what he was saying most of the time because I couldn´t understand too well and I wanted to take pictures because we could in here. What a beautiful old building! I guess it wasn´t ever really finished, at least the church part, as you can see by the front, because at a point in time the monarchy felt the church was a threat and closed down all monasteries and such, so that it was abandoned for 90 years. The monk said that when he got there it was almost falling apart and they had to de a whole bunch of cleanup and repairs. That was pretty much it. I have a lot of pictures, but I´m only going to include a few here now. Lots of them aren´t very good because of the lack of lighting in the old places, I´m guessing to help preserve artifacts and such. Well, I hope you enjoy them, and you can also find information about them online if you look up Segovia I´m sure. Love you all!