Segovia, Madrid, and wierd art museums Part 1 Segovia

First off, let me make a correction, it was not an archdiosis or however you spell it. It was Archbishop, yep thats it! This post is going to take a while so I´m going to talk about Segovia in this post, then Mardid and its interesting splendors in the next part. So first off we went to Segovia which is a very small, quaint town. You can still feel the midevil atmosphere I love it! So Let us begin my narration. On June 6th we sent to Segovia to visit an Alcázar, Cathedral, and aquaducts. The first thing that one cannot help to notice are the views, everyone where I look the view is wonderful. We took a bus and right after we arrived we went to the Alcázar or castle. We are greeted at the gate by a large statue and beautiful gardens before going across the drawbridge. Looking over the wall surrounding the gardens one can see a town in a valley between two mountains, and if you are brave enough to look down you see many cliffs and trees. I am not brave enough to look down, I have a thing about being pushed over the end of a cliff by someone joking around. Moving on, the castle does have a moat which you can observe by looking down over the wall facing the castle before crossing the drawbridge. The Alcázar was built about the 1400s if not earlier and burned in the 1500s but later restored soon after. We toured the Alcázar and its interesting rooms, the most interesting to me being either the room with all of the kings and queens encircling the room at the top of Spain that were only Castillean. The edifices had coat of arms, names, and a brief history of their reign and a few years. They all looked down at you and it ended with Juana la Loca, or Joan the Mad who was Isabel the Catholic and Ferdinand´s daughter who was married to Phillip the Fair. Rooms that we toured include a thrown room, armory, king´s chamber, some meeting hall, an antecamber, and a pinecone room (named so because of the ceilings) our tour came to an end. Later we climbed about 150ish or more stairs to the top of the castle to see the views and they were magnificent. I recommend to anyone to visit the Alcázar it is worth seeing. Now, moving on to the cathedral , this was the first cathedral I had ever seen and it was beautiful, I could not stop staring and my neck began to hurt because I was absorbing it all. This place was HUGE. If anyone was interested in was 3€ to enter the cathedral, but lucky that came with the price of my trip. Construction on the cathedral began on June 8, 1525 under Bishop Diego Ribera and then was fully consecrated in July 16, 1768. To save expenses and such the baptismal frount, choir, and cloisters were salvaged and put in the new church after it was burned. The Cathedral of Segovia is considered the last Gothic cathedral but it does contain several midevil peices. The oldes piece of art that I noticed dates back from the 1200s when Christianity was making it big. There were several side rooms to the cathedral and artworks and huge alter pieces in each. There were also old bishop robes dating back from the 1600s in a side room. The stain glass pieces were beautiful each depicting a scene of Christ or his apostles as well as other major stories in the bible. No technology can be used in the cathedral ie no pictures, not even with flash, but I still saw people sneak them, that pissed me off a bit because its not very respectful for time and history if we want to save it. Anyways, the final place we went to were the aquaducts, which start very tall and were built without mortar. I thought the aquaducts were not the best, perhaps if I saw them first I would appreciate them but I did not find them amazing but it was still cool to see a 2000 year old structure still standing. Segovia is turely an amazing town that stands out because it is a beautiful, quiet, quaint town despite the bustle of a few tourists coming to see the alcázar. there are some very touristy shops that I avoided but only went it to buy some postcards or pictures of the inside of the cathedral because I didn´t take any. Out of all the shops and I went one, one stood out the most and that was a shop with some special things make my local artist in Segovia or around the central region of Spain including Toledo and Madrid. I cam across some jewelry that I had never seen anything like it before it was handmade by an artisan from Toledo mostly from some sort of metal substance. I decided to get the ring, earings, and bracelet because I knew I wasn´t going to go back I got a pretty sweet deal for 58€ for all three based on all the other prices I saw throughout the day. The owner was a very intelligent and refined Señora who talk to Elisa and I about how everything was made and where it originated from. I also bought some small hand painted prints made by an artist in Segovia for my apartment next year. All in all, if I ever had the chance to return to Segovia i would! If you ever get the chance to go to Spain you must see Segovia. It makes an easy day trip from Madrid for those who get tired of a huge cosmopolitan area.

Enjoy this post because the next one won´t be as long!
Courtney