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<\/a><\/p>\nAfter climbing uphill to get a better view of the Aqueduct, I made my way to the Cathedral and Plaza Mayor- the city center. I later found out that Queen Isabel the Catholic (the one responsible for sponsoring Christopher Columbus\u2019 voyage as well as exiling the Jews and Muslims from Spain) was crowned Queen of Castile right in this plaza. Despite this being a small town, it was certainly alive! I continued on my way and headed to the Alcazar, another of the city\u2019s main sights. Rumor has it that this was one of Walt Disney\u2019s inspirations for building Cinderella\u2019s Castle in Disney World- I certainly saw the resemblance! Unfortunately, the front fa\u00e7ade of the castle was covered in scaffolding, but the sides and back of the castle were still visible (and beautiful). The castle is currently used as a military archive and museum, but you can still see the various rooms from when it was used as a royal residence. Since I had time to kill, I actually toured this castle twice, just to make sure I didn\u2019t miss anything! And from the castle, you could see incredible views of the surrounding area and cathedral, so I tried to stick around as long as possible.<\/p>\n
After the Alcazar, I meandered my way back to the city center, finding an absolutely gorgeous garden with a walking trail. As I was strolling through the garden, I noticed a small pathway with a door with the heading \u201cMuseum\u201d above it. I decided to give it a try, and lo and behold, it was a Marionette Puppet Museum- who knew? All the displays were works of the puppeteer, Francisco Peralta, a Spanish native with a love and enthusiasm for Segovia, thus the location of the museum. He believed puppets were both educationally and artistically important for society, and spent the majority of his life creating puppets and puppet shows, as well as innovating new puppet making techniques. This was something I knew nothing about, so it was very interesting to see all of his different works and learn something new!<\/p>\n
I continued to wander around the streets and fields of Segovia for about another hour or so, then stopped by Limon y Menta, a bakery and coffee shop. What a great decision that was- thanks for the suggestion, Mom! I got what the shop is most famous for, Ponche de Segovia. A classic Segovian dessert, it\u2019s essentially sponge cake with marzipan and a thin layer of frosting and powdered sugar. It doesn\u2019t get much better than that!<\/p>\n
I only had a bit of time left, so I headed to the Cathedral to tour it and climb to the top of the bell tower. An architectural masterpiece, this was the last Gothic Cathedral built in Spain. Just as I walked in, a tour of the Cathedral began, so I immediately joined that and got a good history of the Cathedral throughout time. The tower is around 300 feet tall, and at one point, was the tallest tower in all of Spain. While I did manage to get some spectacular views of the city once I got to the top, my excitement was diminished by my fear of missing my train. I was under the impression that you could climb the tower at your own leisure, but it turned out to be a 75-minute tour with stops along the way to the top with historical lectures and movie viewings. By the time I exited the Cathedral, I had only 25 minutes before my train was supposed to leave and the train station was around 20 minutes away. I literally ran from the Cathedral to the Aqueduct (the bus and taxi drop-off and pick-up location) and of course, there were no buses running to the train station. I then hopped in the nearest taxi and made it to the train station with only five minutes to spare! Although the end of the day was stressful, it doesn\u2019t take away from the incredible day I had. This small town was absolutely spectacular and if you ever visit Madrid, you should definitely make time for this on your trip. How I loved this town! This was supposed to be one of our class trips, but unfortunately, was cancelled due to lack of interest from much of the class. I had still wanted to go, so I researched it the night before and was happy to see tickets were only \u20ac20 round trip! So that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":437,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-verano"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/437"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5051"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16426,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5051\/revisions\/16426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"