Long Weekend

Whew. So we had a long weekend trip to Segovia, Toledo, and Burgos, and it is kind of funny how sitting on your butt on a bus for a lot of hours really wears you out.

We started off leaving at 8:30 Friday morning from Santander, heading down to Segovia, which is about 4-5 hours away. We dropped our stuff off at the hotel, ate lunch, and then went on our guided tour of Segovia. They have Roman aqueducts, which are pretty amazing. Not only did the Romans think of a way to move the water uphill to where it was needed, but the entire thing was built back in the first century AD without any cement or anything. Then we went and saw a variety of things in the city, ending with the castle. It had a dried up moat, and what can I say...I'm a sucker for castles. Anyway, after that we had some free time to look around before dinner, and then that was the end of the day.

The next day we had breakfast at 8 and left the hotel at 8:45 on our way to Toledo, which is about 2 hours from Segovia. We had a tour guide this time (the other times it was our art/culture teacher), named Carrrrrlos. (Which is how he said it when he talked to us.) He was pretty funny, although the group asked him to talk to us in Spanish but he talked like we were 8 year olds and kept going back to English for most of it anyway. It was kind of nice because he was talking his Spanish so slow and Spanglishing it so much that I think I actually understood everything he said. We saw a lovely panoramic view, one of the churches, the cathedral, and El Entierro del Señor de Orgaz by Greco, which is a really famous painting from the Spanish Renaissance. The Cathedral is the tenth largest in the world and the second largest in Spain, so that was spiffy as well. Then we had lunch and free time, and then it was back to Segovia and the hotel.

Sunday, we again left at 8:45 to head home and go to Burgos. The weather, which was warm (really hot by Oregon definitions - wimps can't take 85 degrees!) :) and sunny for Friday and Saturday, decided to drop to the 60s (freezing by my little Vegas standards) and rain Sunday. We got to wake up to a nice thunder storm though, which I've missed while living in Oregon. We did a big tour of the Cathedral in Burgos, which started off really cool and impressive...but was really big and I've noticed the spiffy architecture stops being spiffy after you've been looking at it for two hours. Then we had lunch and took off for home, getting home at about 5:30. Originally I think we were supposed to spend more time in Burgos and see something else, since we were supposed to get back at 9, but with the weather I think they decided against it, which by that point I was happy with.

So that was it. Lots of cool stuff, lots of time on a bus, lots of not wanting to go to school today...I just need a day off. :) But it was fun to see the stuff.

:)

Anica