EU Holiday, September 11 (Escape From Alcazar)

For my last day in Madrid, I instead went to Segovia, a small old city about an hour from Madrid. I arrived by high speed train to a station which is surrounded by nothing. There's just hills and grass, maybe even a few cows. They have a bus connection with the train to get you in to the actual city though. The first thing you see when you arrive is this big roman aqueduct. It has been surprisingly well preserved, although I still don't really understand how an aqueduct works. At least I can say I've seen an aqueduct...

There is a tourist map which marks all interesting things to see along the city, so I followed one of the routes for that which runs along the inner walls of the fortified city and past most of the landmarks. I passed a few churches and some other stuff, and arrived at the main square which contains a crazy large cathedral. I forgot to find out if it was possible to go inside before moving on. Next was the San Andres Gate (sadly not San Andreas Gate) which is one of the entrances into the city.

Segovia Cathedral.

Towards the back though is the biggest attraction of the city, Alcazar. It is a big stone castle with a bunch of large gray towers, and it looks strangely similar to one of those Disney castles.

Alcazar.

Alcazar front view, the best I could do with all the trees in the way.

The roman aqueduct, in central Spain.

I got back to Madrid in the afternoon to find all of Gran Via was closed down. It looked to me like a bicycle race was coming along soon, although Amir guessed it was a festival - another win to me. It was actually the last day of the Tour de Espana or something, like how the last day of the Tour de France goes down the Champs Elysees. I managed to grab a few photos of the leaders and the peloton as they went by a few times. I had tried to locate a few anime stores but they were all closed in the afternoon for the stupid siesta break and still hadn't opened back up at 5pm.

The peloton on Gran Via.

In the evening we went back to the Irish Pub another time, to watch the opening weekend of NFL games. On the way there it looked we had just missed out on the victory podium celebrations for the bicycle race, which they had set up in the middle of Plaza de Cibeles.