Midterms are looming in the near future, which means I’ll be buckling down to take exams and write papers.
Luckily, a friend and I were able to squeeze in time to go see Segovia a short train ride away, perfect for a day trip if you just want to get out of the city for a while.
Segovia is about an hour away in a car or, if you’re like us and take a high-speed train called the AVE, about 20 minutes. It’s most famous for its massive Roman aqueduct, an impressive structure that cuts across the center of the city, a leftover from the Roman Empire and a strange reminder of the passage of time, given that there’s a McDonald’s located right next to it.
There are several things to see in Segovia, and because the city is so small and the day was warm, we decided to create a pseudo-walking tour of our own. As I mentioned in my last column, Spain has several impressive mountain ranges, and Segovia sits right at the base of one, the Sierra de Guadarrama. It was better to defend that way.
It also meant wherever we looked we were surrounded by mountains. Segovia, like Toledo, is also a UNESCO World Heritage site, according to the Lonely Planet. While Segovia doesn’t have such tight restrictions, it still looks much the same as it did five or six hundred years ago.
Now, keep those images in your head, and then think of the movie “Sleeping Beauty” — the Walt Disney version. Disney based Sleeping Beauty’s castle and the surrounding area on Segovia. He did a good job.
I like to think of myself as a relatively level-headed person, but as we walked along Segovia’s cobblestone medieval streets and came up on the castle itself, my inner 3-year-old almost had a heart attack.
The castle, called Alcázar, is, unfortunately, not the original. The original castle, built in the 13th and 14th centuries, burned down in the 1800s and was carefully rebuilt.
But it is impressive. It juts out over a steep cliff-face — good for defense, keep in mind — and is just a little to the side of the rest of the city, which means that Segovia seen from a distance is, quite literally, a fairy-tale town — perfect for a Sleeping Beauty’s long nap.
Unfortunately, we had to leave the movie-come-to-life to head back home and take midterms.
But it’s nice to know there’s a fairy tale just a train ride away.
ewenning@indiana.edu
