Spain Part II: Madrid day trips

 Saturday May 24 – Day trip to Toledo

We got up early to catch an Uber and then a bus (1.5 hours) to Toledo, the former capital. The old part of the city is situated on a large hill, which meant a hike from the bus station, though they also had some exterior escalators.

Once there, we did a walk around and went into the Alcazar, a fortress which is now a military museum. It was also very large and worthwhile, and included some ruins that are now enclosed by the new part of the museum.

After the Alcazar, we walked around the edge of the hill, which offered great views of the city.

We went down the hill and across a footbridge, up to an old monastery first built by the Teutonic Knights. It is now a youth hostel.

Down the hill and up the other side, it was time for a visit to the grand Toledo Cathedral.

Toledo is known as a city where Jews, Muslims and Christians have lived in relative harmony, notable given the conflicts between this groups in Spanish history. We walked around and found another nice church, as well as the Jewish quarter, which is signalled by special pavement tiles and markings.

Toledo also contains some relatively recently-discovered Roman baths. This was worth a free and brief view.

There is a special goat cheese in Toledo called Montego that Nancy wanted to try after some reviews from co-workers. She  got some cheese from the “cheese museum” as well as a as special cheesecake.

We wandered around a bit more, but it was getting on, including coming across a religious procession to a nearby church, so we headed back to the bus station at around 8 PM and caught a bus back to Madrid, caught and Uber and went back to the hotel.

Sunday May 26 – Day trip to Segovia

We were up early again to catch the regional train to Segovia (1.5 hours). Once there, we wandered around and found the old bullring (which is still in occasional use).

We walked down to the bus station and after some confusion, found our bus to La Granja de San Ilefonso, a former royal summer palace 10 km from Segovia. A lot of the palace is open for viewing. Most of the lower floor ("public") rooms were essentially to hold themed collections of art. I assume they were empty most of the time if there were no royal visitors. 

The main feature of the palace is its sprawling gardens. Owing to time constraints we only took a short walk around them but could have spent all day there. There weren’t enough flowers for Nancy to enjoy (mainly fountains, trees and shrubs) but I liked them.

After the bus back to Segovia, we went for a walk up another hill to the historic heart of the city, and around the cathedral, past the canonry (former residence of the cathedral canons):

and to the beautiful Alcazar, a fortress and royal palace that is now an excellent museum.

We were able to go up to the top of the Tower of John II in the Alcazar, which had great views of the city, in particular the cathedral.

We doubled back to briefly see the cathedral, which, while beautiful, was not as spectacular as Toledo’s. However, because it is built on the top of a hill instead of on the side of it, it is easier to get views of it from the outside. Still, I can usually not resist a cathedral.

The final stop of the day was the main reason for coming to Segovia – the extant Roman aqueduct bridge of almost 1 km. The aqueduct conveyed drinking water from the mountains some 17 km away, was built around 100 AD, and was being used for its original purpose into the 1800s. It is built of unmortared bricks held in place by their weight only. Such feats of Roman engineering were not surpassed for a thousand years. There is a significant tourism presence around the aqueduct, with a fair and lots of “Roman” (I use the term loosely)-themed shops.

A cab to the high-speed rail station located some distance outside of the city capped off our day, where we took a 20-minute train ride on high-speed rail (my first trip on such a machine, travelling 250 km/h) back to Madrid and then took the metro home.