Medieval Magic (Segovia)

I left Malaga reluctantly, but was soon glad that I did.  If I hadn’t continued on my travels through Spain, I never would have discovered Segovia, which is my new favorite place in Spain.  I planned to stay for three days and ended up staying for five! Segovia, in the Castilla y Leon region northwest of Madrid is a world (ok, just a few hundred kilometers) away from Malaga.  The heart of life in Segovia still takes places in and directly around the old city walls.  A beautiful roman aqueduct, thousands of years old, runs right through the historic center. Beautiful old churches and monasteries abound.  The Alcazar (castle) is said to have been Walt Disney’s inspiration for the Beauty and the Beast castle. Beautiful green mountains are visible in the distance. All of this gives Segovia a sense of both magic and mystery. It’s a small city (pop. 50,000) so it’s very tranquil and surrounded by green spaces and two rivers.  Also, the people are really friendly!

In front of the aqueduct

When I arrived at my hostel, Blanca, who runs the hostel along with her friend Guillermo, gave me a map and pointed out all the highlights of the city.  She mentioned the location of a community garden and when I expressed interest in seeing it, she told me she and her friends have a plot, and I was welcome walk there with her if I wanted.  And so my time in Segovia began with a couple hours spent harvesting tomatoes and weeding garden beds in the most beautifully situated community garden I’ve ever seen, below the old city walls and irrigated by natural springs. Blanca pointed out to me an edible weed and asked if I knew it, and I realized it was purslane, which thanks to Martha in Silver City, I know is delicious.  Apparently I was the only one interested in eating it, so I created my own little purslane pile separate from the weeds.  Sauteed with onion and scrambled eggs, it made a great meal the following day! After gardening, I walked with Blanca and her friend Maria to a local bar en route to bring their veggies to the hostel, carrying a bag overflowing with tomatoes on one arm and a stalk of basil in my other hand. They told me I looked like a local and now I just needed to learn one phrase to sound like one too – “¿Que paja (paha), maja (maha)?”  Apparently Segovians says their “s” as a “j,” which in Spanish sounds like the English “h.” So this phrase is actually “¿Que pasa, maja?” to anyone outside of Segovia and basically translates to “how’s it going, friend?”  Armed with the magic words, I waived my basil wand and POOF, Rachel transformed to Raquel, from Segovia.

Segovia community garden (foreground) beneath the
old city walls.

Another day I took a long walk around the city, stopping every 20-30 minutes to pick blackberries from the abundant bushes.  If anyone every questions whether or not blackberries are an invasive plant, I invite you to visit Segovia, where blackberry branches climb up and over entire trees! When I left Germany I thought I had said goodbye to berries for the season, so although the Spanish berries are smaller and less juicy due to drought, this discovery was exciting. By the end of my afternoon-long stroll, I’d gathered enough blackberries to munch on for breakfast for the rest of the week. I also discovered on this walk, that the Alcazar is best enjoyed by circling the city.  I’d visited it the day before and been unimpressed by the interior and even the view from the front, but you just can’t beat this view from down below.

No, this is not a movie set backdrop - it really does
look this amazing.

Other highlights included a visit to a monastery, the massive palace gardens in a nearby town, a little museum about local cuisine, and a guided tour of a local photography exhibit in which I was the only non-native Spanish speaker, and I understood almost all of it! The old pre-Inquisition Jewish cemetery is somewhat preserved and the historic Jewish neighborhood still stands, although there’s little Jewish about it today other than the names of a few restaurants.  One restaurant, the Judería, serves Indian food tapas, and they’re actually not bad!  How’s that for cultural fusion? A tiny two-room museum about Sephardi Jews was unimpressive and not that informative unless you know nothing about Judaism, but I’m looking forward to my visit to the synagogue and museum in Toledo at the end of my trip. Magically, in a region known for its grilled meat, I found several vegetarian-friendly menus that also fit all my current dietary restrictions, despite the fact that the actual vegetarian restaurant in town was closed because the owners were on vacation. The aspect of Toledo I enjoyed the most was the people.  I had many nice conversations with Blanca and Guillermo and their friends, as well as shop and restaurant owners.  At the end of my time in Segovia, Blanca and Guillermo provided many suggestions for my travels in northern Spain and even printed out a map of the narrow gauge railroad line running across the northern coast.  They invited me to return for a longer stay and gave me my first night’s stay free for helping in the garden plot, which was a rather unexpected and nice surprise. I’ll definitely be returning there at the first opportunity I get.