3: Segovia

Pete Blanchard
Aug 28, 2017 · 6 min read

I love Segovia. It’s not a huge, impersonal, bustling metropolis like Madrid. Instead, it’s one of many delightful, small cities in Spain which you can cross on foot quite easily in a morning, like Burgos or Zamora.

The old city may get full of tourists in summer (though not in the freezing cold of a Segovian winter), but it’s a lived-in city, a working city still. It’s old and decrepit in places but still beautiful. It has the famous and very impressive Roman aqueduct. It has the Alcázar, the castle on which Walt Disney modelled his Disneyland castle and it has the imposing Gothic cathedral embedded within its narrow medieval streets. Built on a rocky hill, it also has some impressive views; south to the Guadarrama mountains, north over the narrow valley and river towards Zamarramala and west to the pine-covered hills.

Back in the nineties, my then fiancée and I were so taken with the city when we visited it that we decided it was the ideal place to get married. It would have made quite the venue for an unforgettable fairy-tale wedding. Sadly, my pre-internet letter to the Spanish embassy in London, asking how we could do this was answered by a classic slice of Spanish bureaucracy; “one cannot marry in Spain unless one of the betrothed is currently legally resident in Spain”. That was that idea well and truly buggered then. I couldn’t help but think that for a country so dependent on tourism, Spain was missing a trick here.

Twenty years on, I’d booked Peter and me a night in the same hotel his mum and I had stayed in back then. I’d liked Los Linajes. It was a quaint old 3-star hotel with an impressive view north over the valley and the Monasterio de Santa María del Parral. Given the location of the hotel on the side of the north cliff of the city, the facilities were on different levels; reception was on the 4th floor, but the breakfast room was on the 1st with the bedrooms on the other four floors.

Peter and car, outside Los Linajes

We checked in with the help of a very cheery receptionist and took the lift up a floor to the 5th then a further flight of stairs to room 606 on the top floor. The room was ideal in size with an en suite bathroom and, importantly, air conditioning. One side of the room had a window with a rooftop view towards the cathedral and the other a door onto a small azotea or rooftop terrace built into the roof of the hotel with the valley view.

The view of the Monasterio de Santa María del Parral from our balcony

First stop on our brief visit was to the Alcázar. Apart from the Disney connection, this castle featured on the front of the envelopes of photos you got back from every Kodak photo developer back in the 1970s. The Spanish had tourism sussed out even back then.

The castle has a long history from the Romans to the present day. It’s an impressive building set on the northern most spur of the rocky hill Segovia is built on. The interior was mainly rebuilt after a great fire 150 years ago but still impressive, with intricate ceilings and suits of armour - adult, child and equine - adorning the various halls and rooms. The views across the two valleys that the castle dominates are impressive. And the awkward climb up the 156 steps to the top of the Juan II tower is worth it for the views across the city.

Segovia Cathedral, as seen from the Tower of Juan II

Afterwards, we walked back across the moat bridge to the intriguingly-named Casa de la Química, a café where we sat on the terrace looking south towards the cathedral. Given the heat, two large fans were blowing cooling water vapour across the terrace. We had a couple of cool drinks and a bowl of unsalted crisps as we relaxed, listening to a guy playing a dulzaina (type of recorder or oboe) on the hill opposite us. Given the penetrating sound of the instrument, the guy had wisely chosen to practise well away from his and his neighbours’ houses.

Time for a cool drink in view of the cathedral.

We left the café around 8pm. Peter said he was very tired and fancied an early night. I laughed and explained that time works differently in Spain. Here nobody goes to bed at 8 or 9pm unless they’re very ill. As we passed through the Plaza de la Merced, there was a small groups of chatting Spanish mums in the sqaure, with their babies. I pointed them out to Peter, saying that in England, these babies would be in their cots long before this time. The compromise was we’d go back to the hotel, rest up for a bit and go out for dinner later on.

Leaving the hotel around 9.30pm, we wandered up to the Plaza Mayor, or main square of the city. As we walked up the Calle Escuderos, Peter asked why there was a small crowd outside one of the bars. I explained it was just a normal bar and that’s what happened here; people were out to have a drink and enjoy themselves. “But it’s not the weekend” he said, still puzzled. “This is Spain” was my answer that became a running joke the more I explained to him.

The Plaza Mayor and Segovia cathedral at sunset.

It was a warm Thursday evening and the Plaza Mayor was alive with people. They seemed to be mainly locals, with few tourists around at all. Presumably, the tourists had already eaten at much earlier British, French, German or Chinese dinner times. We toured the plaza looking at the restaurant menus before we decided to sit outside on the terrace of La Concepción restaurant.

Peter was still fascinated by the fact that Spain seemed to be populated by night owls, who were having dinner at 10pm.

“Don’t they have to go to work in the morning?”

Indeed they did, but time works strangely in Spain, something even Albert Einstein never fully managed to grasp. There must be some kind of complex algorithm that combines Spanish time, weather, food and drink to explain the enviable quality of life there.

Spanish night owls

We finished our snacky dinner of bread, tortilla and jamón, paid the bill and wandered back down to the hotel. Peter crashed out shortly after but I stayed up to sip a bottle of Cruzcampo beer on the balcony, watching the bats flit around just below. Through my mind, flitted thoughts of moving back out to Spain. I think I may have brought a few of those back with me.

To be continued.

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