Monday, June 29, 2009

Segovia

IMG_1599 One last stop before we head out of Spain and back to the states for a spell: Segovia. Segovia is one of the cool little medieval towns outside of Madrid that desperately clings to a fortified hill in hopes of protecting itself from invading Moors, Christians, Visigoths, Hobbits, American tourists, and what not. It is famous for a couple of landmarks: a nearly 2000 year old Roman Aqueduct and a 19th century alcazar fortress which was supposedly the inspiration for Walt Disney’s fairy-tale castles. Not that we had much time or space to see them as we somehow managed to wander into yet another festival. I know what you’re thinking right now Jason Beck: “you’re killing me Mosko!” Not so J… we really had no idea this was going on! I guess that the Spaniards really need very little excuse to throw a party. I can see it already: Some town leaders sitting at a bar start drinking beers and talking and come to the conclusion “It’s June… Let’s throw a week long party!”. Brilliant! So we ditched our plans to tone it down and relax and headed out to the live outdoor concert that was being held in front of the Cathedral(!!) that night. IMG_1586 The band was pretty cool: some sort of a mash-up of Spanish rock and Celtic music complete with bagpipes, flutes, and fiddles. Click Here to have a listen to what Celtas Cortos sounds like. The concert didn’t start until 12:30am, but it was packed with people none the less. Everyone was just out having a good time, and all of the restaurants converted into outdoor walk-up bars which was super convenient. :) People dancing in the street… People dancing on balconies… Good times, good times.

Not resting on our laurels, we woke up the next day to partake in the rest of the week’s festivities. Yes… not only had we stumbled into another festival, but this one had been going on for two weeks now and we were hitting the ending ceremonies. This time, there was a children’s parade in the afternoon, followed by an outdoor gypsy/folk concert in front of the aqueduct. But before this we needed to eat, and were pleasantly surprised to find that there was a local Tapas competition going on. Most of the bars around town were offering their best dishes for 1.50 Euro… a deal too good to pass up. Time for a mid-day tapas crawl. I think that we only made it through around 4 bars of this, as we were ordering beers with every dish and got lit up pretty quickly! The food was fantastic though, and 4 Tapas each was plenty enough for our appetites.

IMG_1627 The festival ended with some fireworks over the city. Since we were staying outside of the city anyway at the Parador de Segovia, we headed back early and watched the show with the city as a backdrop. Nice.

Check out the photos (and a couple of video clips) over on Picasa:

http://picasaweb.google.com/richmosko/Segovia

and here is where Segovia is on the map of Spain (Click Here).

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