Apologies I have not written in awhile. It's because I've been two parts too busy and maybe one part too lazy to update things until now. Lots to cover.
I left you last Wednesday before heading to the Plaza de Toros. There was a museum there, along with an actual bullfighting ring. The tour was kind of boring and took twice as long since the (curator? director? tour guide?) spoke in Spanish and then one of our professors insisted on repeating everything in English. There were paintings and pictures and too much about the history, if you ask me. But then we were able to enter the Bullfighting stadium; quite breathtaking.
As for the big important fútbol match for the evening. Barcelona won, so Spain went nuts. I watced the first half in a bar with Mónica, her friend Beatrice, and Beatrice's father. There must have been zero room in all of the bars in Valladolid. At halftime Móni and I just went back to the house to watch the rest of the game with Eduardo. The second the game was over and Barça won, we could hear people yelling in the streets and little fireworks shooting off; very cool.
Thursday and Friday came and went. They were relaxing days to sit at the beach or take naps. Friday night we all went out again and this time other people shared the distaste I had for traveling in large groups not knowing where we were going. If we were to happen to end up at the same place in a huge group I'm fine with that, but just not in the streets. Therefore, Friday night was very fun. I even tried to mesh in a bit and struck up some conversations with some other people from Spain. A lot of them know at least a little bit of English.
Saturday morning started this new refreshed excitement I have for Spain. First we travelled to La Granja, sort of a royal garden. The place is huge and there are sculptures and woods and everything. A great place to be at peace and think.
The palace that accompanied the royal garden was right next to it, but the line was too long for us, so we left for Segovia. Segovia is a great city in the middle of a lot of open land. (You'll see what I mean in a bit) Here, they have the famous Roman Aquaducts. A big bridge-like structure that was used to bring water from the top of the mountain down to the city. The best part about this though, was that no adhesive was used; no concrete or nothing. It was simply constructed with strategic planning, friction and the right amount of weight put in the right places.
Then we had some free time to walk around. There were a lot of nice little shops to go into filled with some of the most random items to buy. [A lot of tourist stores here sell actual samurai swords and kitana swords. Whaaa?] Other than that, we reunited and left as a group to so to a Castle nearby. It was a legitimate ancient castle, now slightly turned into a museum. By far the coolest thing in Segovia. The view was breathtaking after taking the spiraling steps up the tower to the top:
I felt very content at that moment for some reason. Very at ease. I looked in all directions at the top of the tower of the castle and saw nothing more than the horizon. THIS was the part of Spain that I came to see.
To be continued ....
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