Europe 1: Manhattan, Toledo and Segovia

Ever since our daughter Sienna was little, we told her that when she graduated from high school, we would take her to Siena, Italy. Isabel, our awesome foreign exchange student from Madrid, lived with us during the 2019-2020 school year, so we planned to visit her in Spain sometime as well. Since Sienna and Isabel both graduated this year, and COVID restrictions had relaxed some, the time had come.

Our plan was to visit Isabel and her parents in Parla, Spain (just south of Madrid); spend a week touring northern Spain with the three of them; and then take Isabel with us to Italy for a week, before returning to Spain for a couple more days.

So on Thursday, June 23, 2022, Sienna, Linette and I boarded a plane for Newark, New Jersey (which is almost as close to Manhattan as JFK airport, and had better flights this time). 

We had fun watching movies on the flight.

When we got to New Jersey, we took a taxi to Manhattan. That cost more than taking trains, but made it more likely we would be on time for our Broadway play that night.

Our hotel room was on the 29th floor.

We had a nice view of Manhattan from way up there.

That night we went to see the play "Come From Away", which tells the story of the flights that were diverted to Newfoundland in Canada when the U.S. airspace was closed on 9/11 in 2001. It was a musical and was very well done. It told about how the people in a small town of 5000 had to prepare to host 7000 people on all the planes that landed there. It also told about how the people on the planes had no idea what was going on, even as they had to sit on the planes for up to 36 hours. When they got off, they were offered beds and food, but what they were really starved for was information. So they were shown news broadcasts to bring them up to speed. Then what they wanted most was access to telephones (since most didn't have cell phones in those days) so they could connect with their families.

Eventually they all started connecting, some of the townspeople invited people to come take showers in their homes, and many friendships were formed. A 10-year reunion was held in that town in 2011. We were delighted to have been able to see the play.

After the play, we walked around Time Square for a bit.

We watched some fellows put on a street show and milk the crowd for money.

It was a fun first evening of the trip.

Our flight the next day wasn't until 9pm, so we had much of the day to explore Manhattan. (We purposely left some buffer between our round trip flights to Newark and the round trip flights from JFK to Madrid, since they were booked separately, just in case something went wrong with one of them).

We started the day off with a surprisingly great bagel and muffin from some food trucks on the street.

Then we wandered our way over to central park. We listened to a jazz band play for a minute while we sat on a wall in the shade.

While we listened, Linette and I fell over for a few minutes.

We walked by the chess house, saw a massively long line of people trying to get in to a summer concert, and then wandered through a reclamation garden in central park that strove to create an area with original native plants.

Here's Sienna at the Alice in Wonderland bronze statue, created in 1959 as a gift to the children of New York City.

This guy was playing Disney tunes on the trumpet really well, backed by a sort of karaoke soundtrack.

We found the turtle pond, and, sure enough, there were a "bale of turtles" there.

We walked to the nearby Metropolitan Museum of Art, and spent a few hours looking at the paintings, sculptures, musical instruments and ancient artifacts there.

This is a painting of St. Mark's Square in Venice, Italy, which we planned to visit later in our trip.

I liked these paintings of a bunch of paintings of sites around Italy..

This dramatic painting depicts Christ breaking down the gate of hell to rescue the souls of the just.

In the musical instruments section, they had lots of interesting instruments, including one of these hourglass drums that I remember watching people play in Korea.

Here is a lute-guitar, with open (unfretted) bass strings in addition to a normal guitar.

I love the models that were found in Egyptian tombs to help the people in the afterlife.

Here are a couple other things I thought were cool.

We enjoyed our time at The Met.

After that, we gave Sienna the experience of riding the metro in New York City.

Near our hotel we tried a couple slices of New York pizza, which was fine (and a smoothie that was amazing).

We took the metro and air train out to JFK Airport, and prepared to board as the sun set.

Our flight flew through a shortened night, arriving about 8 hours later in Madrid at 10:20am. We eked out a few hours of sleep on the way there, and caught a movie or two along the way as well.

When we exited bag claim, we found Isabel's parents, Mari and Nico, waiting excitedly to greet us. It was so great to meet them in person!

Isabel had gone on a senior trip to Greece with her high school friends, and was supposed to be back the day before. However, the pilots for the discount airline RyanAir decided to go on strike, which stranded Isabel and her friends in Milan, Italy. She arranged for another flight for the next day, so we had to wait until then to see her.

We were happy to find a sign in Isabel's room that welcomed us to Spain.

We had a great time getting to know Mari and Nico, and it gave us an excuse to speak a lot of Spanish, since they don't really speak English.

We generally planned to stay awake until bed time to try to overcome jet lag quickly, but we did decide to do a nap for an hour or two so we could enjoy the rest of the day a bit more.

After a little rest, Nico and Mari took us to visit Toledo, which is about 40 minutes from their home in Parla (which is just a little south of Madrid).

As we walked from a parking spot to the old part of Toledo, we came across a very pleasant pergola.

Toledo has been around for at least 2,000 years. It was first walled by the Romans, and later the walls were expanded by the Visigoths (who are the ones who sacked Rome in 410 AD). It was the capital of the Visigoth kingdom from 542 to 725 AD, and was the seat of Charles V's court in the 1500s.

It was fun to go in and explore this ancient city, with arches and structures built over the centuries.

I thought this view of the stairs, walls, arches and buildings was interesting, and seemed to capture a little of the varied history that this town has been through over the centuries.

The tall, narrow streets provided cool shade on a hot day.

The "horseshoe" arches come from Moorish influence during the time the Moors inhabited Spain.

The author of Don Quijote was married in the Toledo province, so there are some nods to that story around town. Here I am with a skinny statue of Don Quijote.

And here is Linette with Don Quixote's less-skinny squire, Sancho Panza.

Toledo is known for its swords! There were several sword shops around town. (Shaylee bought one on her mission and had it shipped home.)

The Toledo Cathedral (aka, Primatial Cathedral of Saint Mary of Toledo) is one of three 13th-century High Gothic cathedrals in Spain, and is considered by many to be the coolest one. This is the "back door" that we entered through.

There was an impressive-looking organ there, with cool stained glass windows.

The decorations were very ornate.

Up through one of the domes were some paintings and sculptures that went all the way up. (We couldn't see all the way in from the corner where we were).

Here is the front of the Cathedral.

We saw some little kids trying to balance on the big chain, so Sienna and Nico tried it as well.

I always think these arched skyways are fun.

We found some nice helado (ice cream) as we explored.

Here's Linette with another Don Quixote statue.

The buildings were in all different shapes and sizes.

Here's another moorish arch.

The Tagus River flows next to Toledo.

From the river overlook, you can see some of the walls around the city.

Some of the walls still have "battlements" (the things the archers could hide behind).

Visiting Toledo was the perfect way to spend our first day in Spain, especially since it wasn't even on our list of things to do. Bonus!

Isabel's parents are both originally from Romania, so they took us to a Romanian restaurant that evening for dinner.

We started dinner at about 8:45pm. That might seem later than usual, but it turned out to be pretty early for dinner in Spain. Most restaurants don't even open for dinner until 8pm, and people usually start eating around 10pm, and sometimes 11 or even 12.

It also stays light much longer in Spain than you would expect, because Spain is in the same time zone as Italy and Germany. (Apparently Franco wanted that to be the case back in World War II, and Spain sort of likes the late schedule, so they kept it). It is as far west as the U.K., but is an hour later. So the sun set in Madrid at about 9:45pm and in A Coruña on the west coast it set at 10:18pm, even though it set in Italy at more like 8:45pm.

I guess the food was too tasty for me to stop and take a picture of it before it was mostly gone, but it was really good.

And we finished up with some sort of amazing dessert.

It was after 11pm when we got home, and we finally went to bed after a very long day that kind of started in New York City the day before. Mari and Nico insisted that we sleep in their bed while they slept at their neighbor's place nearby. That was very kind of them.

On Sunday, Linette, Sienna and I got dressed up and attended church at the Parla Branch of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It was fun to sing hymns in Spanish, and great to chat with the people from there. Fun fact: I met Jesus at church! (Well, Jesús). Even though I didn't understand everything that was being said, I felt the spirit there.

Isabel arrived in Madrid later that afternoon, and by the time she made it home, it was about 6:10pm.

We were so excited to see her!

Our original plan was to begin our week-long trip to northern Spain early that afternoon, beginning with stops in Segovia and Ávila. But since Isabel's flight got cancelled, we got a late start, so we decided to skip Ávila for now and catch it on our way back to Madrid, which worked out fine.

Isabel did an amazingly quick job of unpacking and repacking her bag, and then we were off!

Friends of their family lent us a minivan for the trip, which was so wonderful, because it meant we could all ride together instead of going in two separate cars. We stuffed the bags in the back, wedged Sienna in the remaining back seat, and headed north!

Road trip!

I navigated while Nico drove for most of the trip.

Our first stop was Segovia, a town about an hour north and a bit east of Madrid. We found a parking spot and walked over to the amazing Roman aqueduct, which is one of the best-preserved elevated Roman aqueducts still in existence.

It was built around 100 A.D., and used to run about 9 miles before reaching the city, at which point the aqueduct bridge would carry water over the valley into the city.

Wow!

At its tallest point, the aqueduct reaches a height of 93.5 feet (28.5 meters).

We climbed up the stairs to have a view from the top.

From the point the aqueduct enters the city, it contains 75 single arches and 44 double arches (or 88 if you count them both).

At the far end, you can see where it abruptly turns a corner.

The structure is made of granite, and does not use any mortar.

Here's a picture of all of us standing under a different arch. (I heard that the Romans used to have the architect who designed an arch stand under it while the scaffolding was removed, to make sure he was confident in his design. This also had the effect of weeding out bad architects. :)

It's amazing that this thing is still standing after almost 2000 years!

Next, we drove to the other side of town to see the historic center of town, including the "Alcazar" (moorish fortress), which was built at least by 1122, though it was devastated by a fire and rebuilt in 1862. This is one of the handful of castles that were used as a template for Cinderella's Castle at Walt Disney World. 

We also visited the Segovia Cathedral, which was the last Gothic cathedral built in Spain, finished in 1768. It was closed, so we couldn't go inside, but it was pretty impressive on the outside.

Here's a panorama where people ran around to get back in the picture. :)

At the square directly in front of the cathedral were a bunch of restaurants, and since it was almost dinner time (9:20 p.m.), we decided to have dinner there.

However, I knew that the sun was about to set, and the photographer in me couldn't bear the thought of not seeing the Alcazar before dark, so I apologized and excused myself, and hurried a couple hundred meters to where the fortress was.

The sunset started making everything a cool orange color.

Sure enough, the sunset lit the fortress up beautifully.

So pretty!

I loved the narrow streets with the purple sky.

Sometimes the textures of the walls were amazing.

One of the oldest churches in the city is the church of San Millán de Segovia, built from 1111 to 1126 A.D.

The main cathedral looked great with the sunset colors and purple sky. Here it is from the back.

And again from the front, with the orange clouds.

We had a nice meal, starting outside where we could see the cathedral, and ending up inside when it got chilly. We finished eating at about 10:30pm.

The cathedral looked cool all lit up at night.

Finally we wended our way back to the car so we could drive to get to our AirBnB an hour away in the country.

Our AirBnB host was kind enough to let us arrive at midnight to get checked in. Here we all are at our AirBnB a few minutes after midnight, looking like we're ready to keep playing! (We really went to bed a few minutes later).

In our next episode, we continue our tour of northern Spain in León, Oviedo and a national park, as we move into the lush, green area of Asturias.