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Published: December 31st 2015
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city seal Wake up – well not really wake up since Susan and I didn’t sleep well but we got up and headed out with Nicky and Tim.
For breakfast, we ate pastries at a local bakery that was right off the square. After breakfast we headed out to visit the town. Nicky has a guide that she tore the pages out of (that was recommended) and we followed the walking route backwards (as we were where the walking tour ends). Our goal was to get to the aqueduct which is a UNESCO site. In the city center, Nicky tells us the city “seal” is the aqueduct which can be seen on many of the buildings.
Along the way we stopped at the fortified houses with the cut off spires and Nicky read some history to us there. We then continued on to the aqueduct. The aqueduct was built between 80 AD to 96 AD. The aqueduct is underground for about 20 miles before it reaches the city and is about 1 kilometer thru the city. It’s tallest height is 28.5 meters and this portion contains 167 arches. It is a mixture of both double and single arches and is made
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our first view of the aqueduct from unmortared granite blocks. The aqueduct remained in use until the mid 19
th century.
Beside the aqueduct there were stairs and we climbed the stairs but we still could still not see inside the aqueduct. Nicky climbed up the fence to look over and said she could see a small channel. The view from the hill shows a beautiful old Spanish city. Nicky found a map of where the aqueduct ran underground thru the city and we started trying to follow the path. It goes from the mountains outside the city into the above ground aqueduct that is multiple stories deep back underground to the Alcazar, a medieval castle. There are plaques on the road where the aqueduct is underground and we followed that path and walked into town and toured the Segovia cathedral built in the 1500s. After that we wondered the roads to the castle (Alcazar) and did a bit of shopping. We also stopped for unique pastries we eventually ended up at the castle. Alcazar had a lot of history, it was rebuilt/ added onto several times, had lots of kings… burnt in the late 1800s, and yes it had a moat and draw bridge. We
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follow the aqueduct road also saw where the aqueduct came into the castle. From the castle you could see the whole walled city.
After visiting the castle we all were hungry so we went on search for lunch. We ate one of the “multiple plate” meals and sat around and talked for a bit afterwards. Next we went back to the shop to buy the goods we found earlier and back to the hotel to drop off our items.
We wanted to go back to the aqueduct and on the way we stopped at the convent of Corpus Christi which had been a Jewish synagogue in the 13
th century (with Muslim influences) and was later taken over by the church.
We then walked back to the aqueduct and decided to walk up the hill to the end of the above ground portion coming into the city. At what we thought was the end was a huge curve and we decided to continue following it. Slowly, we made our way to the “end” of the above ground portion (it wasn’t the true beginning as it was cut off for roads and went underground several miles outside the city) At this level, we
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bend in the aqueduct could look into it and see the channel.
We walked back to the main portion of the aqueduct and had tea while we waited for the sun to set and the lights of the city to come on. We wanted to see the aqueduct lit up. Once the lights came on, we took more pictures, lost Tim, found Tim ( he went off to take picture from another view and we couldn’t find each other –but Nicky and Tim, did have their phones). As we headed back to the hotel, we walked and looked in the shops a bit more. After resting by checking email…. We gathered ourselves and checked out the 2 nearby restaurants that Nicky’s book suggested. We ate at one and split 4 different dishes. As we were getting ready to leave, the table beside us ordered wine. We immediately recognized it, Emilio Moro. Cool.
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Barbara Fox
non-member comment
I keep getting booted out of the comment section. Argh. What I want to say isnthatni love the pix of the aquaducts. I've always been fascinated by Roman architecture and engineering. Thanks for posting. More at pix