We decided to avoid motorways as much as possible, so we got on some small road that promised to get us to Segovia as soon as we could.
Took us to a dam, and we found ourselves quite close to some mountains. With snow. In Spain. Who'da thunk it?
This is our rental car, a Fiat Punto.
Pros: Affordable and with great fuel economy.
Cons: It's a gutless piece of crap.
Pros: There is no way in hell we're going to get a speeding ticket in this thing.
Pros: Affordable and with great fuel economy.
Cons: It's a gutless piece of crap.
Pros: There is no way in hell we're going to get a speeding ticket in this thing.
When you think of Spain, you think of ... SNOW. Of course!
And ski resorts! With spring skiing still going on !!!
Madrid's down there somewhere.
What's up with the freaky car all covered up ahead? Looks like one of those German prototype cars they don't want to draw attention to or something. Except it was French.
We were still kinda freaked about the snow, so we got out to have a snowball fight.
It was a wee bit nipply in the mountains.
but not too cold to make a snowball.
The scenery just got better and better as we continued on.
Must be nice having a pad like that.
Ducks!
Dude painting the ducks!!!
We got into Segovia, and I was surprised at how little of the place I remembered from last time here. I mean, like nothing at all.
There were these huge birds flying around. They didn't look at all menacing, but they were monstrous.
The "big ticket item" in Segovia? The large Roman aqueducts that are still standing tall in the city. Wow.
They kinda frame the whole city.
You can just stand around and look at them for hours.
We continued wandering around the city in the nice spring weather. There are, of course, churches every few feet.
The central plaza in front of the church. It's probably called Plaza España or something.
The cathedral. It's huge, and they charge you to get in, but fortunatley, it's worth it.
It absoultely towers on the inside and is unbelievably cold.
Since we paid to get in, they felt guilty and let us look around more of the place than most churches let you see.
Next, we walked down to the Alcazar, the local castle, which I had never seen before.
It's pretty cool, and worth the (10 minute) walk.
And the surrounding countryside is extremely cool.
You can pay a little extra to climb the stairs to the top of the tower. Cool!
that's quite the drop down from the walls there. Yeeek!
Castle gardens!
The view back to the city is totally worth the entrance fee alone.
You're way up in the tower, man.
Nice house.
We next just strolled around town looking at whatever there was to see.
Apparently these huge birds are storks, and it's stork mating season. Thus, there's a whole lot of stork-boinking going on right about now.
This dude was trying to get in on some of the action.
"I'm here to pump ... you up!"
The city does, however, completely shut down from 14-16.30, which means that there's not a lot to do.
We decided to continue on and work our way towards Salamanca, snapping a farewell photo outside of town.
On the way, we stopped in Ávila, just to see the famous walls the town is noted for.
When we got to Salamanca, we drove around for a while until we found a very nice and very quiet little hotel for like 45€ a night, which was pretty sweet. We even got free street parking.
We then headed to the Plaza Mayor to grab a coffee and think about eating some dinner.
We continued to wander and watched the sun setting, here on the ancient Roman bridge.
Back at the Plaza Mayor at night.
Sweeet. We actually got a good night's sleep too, which was nice after the noisier place in Madrid.