Segovia; Saturday, 16 March, 2024

The bed in the hotel room turned out to not be that comfortable, and consequently I didn’t need my alarm to go off as I was already awake long before I’d set it, which wasn’t helped by the hotel not starting breakfast until 9am, which was clearly too early for many of my fellow guests as I was the only person down just after 9 to eat and then, after a quick freshen up, heading out into town.

I wandered through the centre of the old town and down to the very end of the hill that the city sits on to the Alcázar, the royal castle that dominates the end of the peninsular with it’s triangular shape not dissimilar to the bow of a ship. Despite getting there early I had still been beaten by at least half a dozen tour groups on day trips from Madrid, unsurprising as the Alcázar is in the top 10 for most visited monuments in Spain.

I was able to work around the tour groups and spent quite a bit of time wandering through the rooms open to the public taking in the opulent rooms and the excellent views from the terraces and walls of the fortification. I then headed over to the onsite café which had one of the best views of both the Alcázar and the Cathedral, as well as having some really good churros.

Sated with Churros con Chocolate and beer I headed back in towards the centre of the old town, following the line of the city walls until I reached the Puerta de San Andrés, one of the gateways into the old city which is open to look around, along with a small stub of the original city walls that you can walk along.

From the gate I headed up into the Plaza Mayor to stop for a late lunch in the main square, before heading back to my nearby hotel room to freshen up (and charge my phone which I’d managed to run dangerously low on battery). It was also a convenient time to take a break as most of the museums are closed in the middle part of the afternoon, reopening at 4pm.

So, just after 15:30, I headed back out of the hotel, crossed the old city and descended down the hill from the Alcázar to the former Royal Mint located down on the banks of the Río Eresma, which used the power of the river to turn the machinery to make money. The Royal Mint of Segovia was responsible for producing coins of the kingdom from the 1500s to the 1800s before production was centralised in Madrid. Today the former mint is now a museum telling the history of both the mint and the broader topic of money itself.

From the mint I could have hiked back up the hill into the city centre, but I decided, especially as one was due within 10 minutes, to catch the bus back up the hill, through the city centre and onto the start of the aqueduct.

The course of the canals and rivers that have fed the aqueduct have changed over the centuries, but they all eventually came to one point where the land starts to fall away and creates the need for an aqueduct to cross into the old city. At this point there is now a stone structure that surrounds the aqueduct itself which acts as a marker point and so you can look through the structure itself and along the course of the water channel running down the middle of the aqueduct.

A short walk further on and you reach a restored sand trap – a large building that straddles the aqueduct and was used to remove sand, leaves and any other debris that had made it into the water – a kind of Roman water treatment plant. From here the height of the aqueduct builds rapidly, firstly with a solid wall before that gives way to 75 simple and then 44 double arches. You can walk alongside the structure all the way as it slowly towers high above you as you descend down into the main plaza at the start of the old town and then climb back up the other side to meet the aqueduct and city walls.

After taking in the aqueduct and a bit more of the city centre I headed back to my hotel to freshen up, before heading out a bit later to have a wander around the city at night, taking in the Alcázar and the Puerta de San Andrés before heading back towards the Plaza Mayor to grab a quick bite to eat before turning in.