segovia and la granja

a few pictures to start out with and describe this amazing day: we went on one of our day trips to segovia and la granja, about an 1 1/2 bus ride north of alcala de henares. it was AMAZING... some of the most beautiful old historical things i have ever seen. the main sights in segovia are El Alcázar, this ginormous castle (which i am at the top of in the second picture), the ginormous catedral, and the ginormous ancient roman aquaduct that is still standing thousands of years after the fact (picture one, in case you couldn't already tell). there was some INCREDIBLE sightseeing going on-- i have about 189210 billion pictures similar to these 3. (i just included the last one because it's a cool shot of the supersupersupersweet alleyways that make up the most of the streets in segovia... you might be able to see a few cars up at the top, they literally just barrel down these miniature streets honking at the pedestrians to get out of their way, it's incredible that things like that are acceptable here.) after walking our legs off at segovia, we went to la granja, which means "the farm" in spanish, but we actually ended up visiting the palacio real of la granja and seeing these huge water shows from the fountains of the palace gardens, which were incredibly beautiful.

points of interest of the day:

-one of the guys in our group, rhett (not butler, sadly) and i went up to a group of nuns in la granja and started talking to them and got a picture with them.. it was awesome. i love practicing my spanish.

-we figured out a way to get up on top of the aquaduct in segovia, so next time i'm here, i'm just going to come up and hang out illegally on the aquaduct.

-we saw several of the "twilight" books that camille likes at this little book stall in the main plaza of alcala de henares in spanish.. i took a picture and sent it to her.

-i gchatted with rique and we figured out that SHE IS GOING TO BE IN MADRID FOR 5 DAYS AND I WILL GET TO SEE HER!!!!!! i haven't been more excited about news like this in a while.. i miss my lovely roommates (<3).

-i bought a present for bethany's birthday, i'll have to decide whether i'm going to send it to her or just bring it home with me to avoid possibility of losing it.