Segovia: Beauty and the Beastly Americans

This Saturday some friends and I went on a little excursion. Sick and tired of spending our weekend days hungover in Madrid, we decided to visit a magical little town called Segovia. And honestly before we boarded the bus, that's about all we knew about the town. I suspected that it was in the north and although my Spanish Fodor's book had 4 whole pages dedicated to the city, I hadn't (and still haven't) read them. Still I'm a big learn by doing gal. Here's what I learned, saw, or deduced from my visit to Segovia.

1) Segovia is baller!

Built on a Spanish hillside there are awesome views all over the city. After getting off the bus we headed for the first thing we saw: a giant Cathedral.

This required us to hike up a buttload of stairs and I quickly realized that Segovia isn't so much on a hill, but on the geographical formation between a hill and a mountain, a formation Merriam Webster has failed to supply me the word for. But once you get up there you can see forever. There are also old castle-like walls that go around the city, but let you climb up even higher (and possibly more safely) for photos.

2) There's this one corner in the town that when you turn all the sudden you see this...

Holy hell! Who put that there? Judging by the wolf-teet sucking statue of Romulus and Remus across from these Aqueducts, twas the Romans. Apparently the Romans made it all the way to Segovia and left these behind.

2a) One thing that constantly amazes me about living in Europe is people's ability to meld their modern lives together such beautiful and historical sights. I mean honestly, how do you walk past these things everyday and go to a crappy job without feeling like an immensely insignificant part of history? And nothing I've seen before has astounded me as much as these Aqueducts. People just walk past, staring at their iPods instead of them.

3) They eat a lot of suckling pig, or cochinillo. This pork is apparently so tender and juicy that the locals cut it with a plate, not a knife. As a vegetarian I did not partake in this traditional cuisine, but I did enjoy a nosefull of the aroma every time we passed a restaurant.

4) Disney based it's Beauty and the Beast castle off the Alcazar in Segovia. The bridge, the garden, the windows, the blocked off west wing, the woods where Father gets lost and attacked by wolves. It's all there. I'm pretty sure a candelabra talked to me as well.

And the best part is that you can walk around more of this castle than any other historical building I've ever been to. Nothing is in glass cases or really protected by anything more than a "No tocas" sign.

5) Never push your luck in Segovia as there is no wood to knock on. The town is made completely of brick (not that it did the cochinillo piggies any good). So as the day continued we began to realize how much we'd lucked out on our trip. The weather was one of the few nice days that Spain has seen in the past few weeks. The people were nice. The town was easy to get around. Transportation had been simple. There were even cute little gatitos running around to entertain us. Then there was dinner.

We found a great pasta place with super cheap food and sangria and had a nice meal. About half-way through another group of Americans walked in and sat at the table next to us. From the parts of their conversation that we overheard, it's a fair assumption to say that these were not nice people. Then when they left one of the girls went up to the waiter (who had been taking care of the restaurant all by himself) and asked him, "Do people make fun of you when you try to speak English?" The waiter said something we couldn't hear and the girl asked him again, "Do people make fun of you because you can't speak English?" The waiter answered in Spanish and the girl turned around to her friends and said "See that exactly proves my point," and then strutted out of the place.

Now granted I have no idea what this girl's "point" was or why she was even asking such a ridiculous question of a man in Spain, but as Americans everyone of us at our table immediately went rigid. We could tell from this girl's tone, posture, and ponytail flick that she meant to embarrass and talk down to this guy. And to think, until then I wondered why the rest of the world dislikes Americans.

K Learns Spanish: Lesson 7

moretón- bruise

constipado- Not what you think. It actually means to be congested from a cold.

tirita- bandaid

Sidenote to Mom: No I was not sick, nor did I fall down a flight of stairs this week. Rather it was health vocab week in my classes.

GoGos- As in the dancers. Still rockin it out around here. They've lost the boots though.