Madrid day trip: the Alcázar castle in Segovia

by Sean McLachlan on


As I mentioned yesterday, Segovia makes a great day trip from Madrid. One of the highlights of any visit is the Alcázar, or castle. Rising from the highest point on the promontory on which Segovia is built, it dominates the town and looks impossible to attack. The architects cut away part of the bedrock to make a dry moat cutting off the castle from the rest of the town, so to get in you have to cross a drawbridge over a deep drop. Don’t look down if you’re afraid of heights!

There may have been a fort here in Roman times, and there certainly was one when the Moors controlled this part of Spain. The present castle was built in the early 12th century and was added to and remodeled several times. Several Castilian monarchs used the castle as their palace. Isabella was living here when she was crowned in 1474, and she married King Ferdinand II here. In 1492 they reconquered Granada, the last Muslim holdout on the Iberian peninsula. They also sponsored some crazy explorer named Columbus to sail across the Atlantic to find India that year, but the big news was capturing Granada.

Several rooms are decorated with suits of armor, including knights on horseback. Even the horses have armor, which was called barding. The walls are adorned with medieval and Renaissance paintings showing courtly and battle scenes. Check out the ceilings to see some intricate painting and relief work that shows Muslim influence. When the Spanish and Moors weren’t fighting, they were trading ideas and Spain was a melting pot of different cultures. The throne room and the chapel are the most impressive rooms and have been restored to their original splendor.

%Gallery-128521%Starting in 1896 and for much of the twentieth century, the Alcázar housed the Artillery Academy. There’s a large artillery museum here showing the development of artillery and the daily life of the cadets. Unfortunately the signage is all in Spanish, but a lot of the displays are self-explanatory.

Military aficionados will love the Armory, a long vaulted room filled with medieval arms and armor. There are numerous examples of early cannon from the 15th century. The first depiction of a cannon dates to 1326, and by 1375 they were being used in sieges to knock down walls. The days of castles were numbered. These cannons are pretty crude, made of long strips of iron welded together with loops around them like barrels (hence the name) to strengthen them.

If medieval warfare isn’t your thing, you’ll still appreciate the views you can get from the many windows and battlements. If you’re feeling fit, ascend the steep, winding staircase up to the top of the tower for sweeping views of Segovia and the surrounding countryside. This is an excellent spot to take pictures.

Love castles? Check out our posts on the ten toughest castles in the world and the ten best castles in Europe!

Video of the Day: Pan to the head

by Mike Barish on

This video is baffling. It’s a group of Brits on a camping trip, yet it appears as if they have just set up camp in someone’s backyard (isn’t that a house behind the fence?). Why is that guy hitting the other guy in the head with a pan? What’s the deal with that second fence made of fabric? We might have more questions than answers, but summer is for camping trips and camping trips are for drunken hijinks*.

So, let’s not spend too much time figuring out what the hell is going on here and simply enjoy the fact that there’s more to life than videos of people at Renaissance fairs getting hit in the crotch.

* Please drink responsibly and away from cookware.

A New Globally Inspired Italian Cuisine? Not Just Yet.

by David Farley on
I was sitting at the bar of one of Italy’s most bizarre restaurants in one of Italy’s most bizarre towns about to watch a confrontation between a diner and a chef. A well-dressed man in his mid-30s had just wrinkled his nose at the menu and shrugged, murmuring something about not being able to recognize anything on the menu “You know what’s wrong with this country?” asked Pancho Garrison, 59-year-old Texas-born chef, who has lived in Italy most his life. The man shrugged again. “Italy is a country of mama’s boys. You’ve got the best cuisine in the world,” added Garrison, “but it’s time that you move away from your mama and start trying new things.” Then, as he usually did, he told the diner that he would bring out a procession of menu items for him to try and would not stop until he ate something he liked. On the house.

Sadly, the Grotta dei Germogli, located in Calcata, a medieval hill town about 30 miles north of Rome, recently shut down (but hopefully that’s just temporary). But if you were lucky enough to eat there, you wouldn’t have been wrong to think that Garrison was on a mission, that diner by diner he’s trying to change the way Italians eat. Watching Garrison work (and seeing people’s reaction to his cooking) was a thought-provoking exercise into the mind of the Italian eater. Thanks to people like Garrison and others in Italy who are actively trying to make the cuisine more progressive things are slowly changing in Italy. Is this going to be part of a revolution of a globally inspired Italian fare? Until very recently Italy was a country where the definition of “fusion cuisine” hardly went beyond mixing basil from Genoa and tomatoes from the Neapolitan countryside; where staunch Roman eaters considered northern Italian cuisine “foreign”; or digging up a baseball-sized truffle was easier than finding a non-Italian restaurant, eating outside the canon of Italian cuisine was nearly unthinkable. And, like at the Grotta, serving Italian-inspired dishes that included ingredients like peanut sauce, coconut milk, and curry to Italians seemed down right radical. But let’s not jump to conclusions. There are a lot more people who are perfectly satisfied the cuisine is lodged where it is.

But this night I was at the bar watching Garrison argue with the diner just another night. It’s perfectly fitting, though, that the Grotta was in Calcata, a hill town known as the “paesi dei artisti” because of the respected artists who moved here after the village was nearly abandoned in the late ’60s (among them are famed architect Paolo Portoghesi, sculptor Costantino Morosin, and painters Giancarlo Croce and Romano Vitali).

Garrison, who’s also an accomplished mosaic artist (he did all the work in the restaurant), said his menu worked because Mediterranean cuisine is so flexible. “It’s versatile enough,” he said from Grotta’s open kitchen, “that you can tweak it in ways that will change it just enough, but still keep its form.” Like the taglietelle with a coconut-tomato-basil sauce. It looks like it could be a standard tomato sauce, but then you try it and it’s like nothing anyone’s mom ever made. Or the gnocchi with almond pesto. To top it off, he would pair his menu with top-shelf (but surprisingly affordable) bottles of Italian vino.


And that diner who wrinkled his nose at the “unusual” menu? He said “buonissimo,” with the first thing Garrison brought out, curried meatballs on a bed of organic whole-wheat rice. He loved it. There’s one more convert.

Madrid day trip: Segovia

by Sean McLachlan on


Madrid offers a wide range of interesting day trips, from a Renaissance castle and Spanish Civil War bunker to challenging hikes. My personal favorite is the ancient town of Segovia just on the other side of the Sierra de Guadarrama mountains. With a beautiful cathedral and castle, one of the best preserved Roman aqueducts anywhere, winding medieval streets, and delicious cuisine, it’s a great choice for a day trip or overnight stay.

The best way to get to Segovia is by bus, which takes a little over an hour. Segovia’s Wikipedia entry says a high-speed train gets there in half an hour, but the high speed train doesn’t go to Segovia, it goes to a station called Segovia several kilometers away from town. You have to take a bus from there. To get to the train station in Segovia proper you go on a local train that takes an hour and fifty minutes. Wikipedia has mistakes!? Shocking!!!!

Anyway, Segovia is a convenient, delightful trip from Madrid. The three big hits are the aqueduct, the cathedral, and the Alcázar, or castle. The Roman aqueduct dates to the late first century AD. Segovia, like many Spanish cities, was a Roman town and perhaps has more ancient roots. The aqueduct is one of the best preserved anywhere and stands 93.5 feet tall in some places and starts at a water source almost ten miles away. It supplied the city with water until the early 20th century. The Romans sure knew how to build things!

The Santa Iglesia Catedral is an impressive Gothic pile started in 1525 and consecrated after many remodels in 1768, making it possibly the youngest Gothic cathedral in Europe. The expansive Plaza Mayor stands to one side. Take time to sip a coffee at one of the many outdoor cafes and enjoy the view. Inside are a series of chapels with often gruesome art, like a dinner party atop a tree. Death is cutting down the trunk with his scythe while Jesus rings a bell. Everyone is ignoring Jesus and a demon is about to pull the tottering tree into Hell. Nice!

%Gallery-128499%Segovia is built on a promontory, and its 12th century castle, the Alcázar, sits at the highest end like the prow of a ship. A rectangular tower soars towards the sky, topped by a beautiful set of round turrets. Inside are the usual displays of armor, weapons, and medieval art that you’d expect in a castle, and a large artillery museum too. The most impressive part of the castle is the view from the top. You get sweeping vistas of the Renaissance skyline of Segovia with its many churches and old houses, as well as the rolling countryside around the city. It gets my vote as one of the best views you can get anywhere close to Madrid.

To learn more about Segovia’s past, check out the Casa del Sol Museo de Segovia. Here you’ll see prehistoric artifacts, Roman sculpture, Visigothic jewelry, medieval and Renaissance art, and tools from Segovia’s early modern period. It’s a great museum but easy to miss, so don’t miss it!

After seeing these sites, take a stroll through the medieval streets of the old town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Like Harar, Ethiopia, another medieval walled city that’s on UNESCO’s list, the labyrinthine streets and alleys can get you lost pretty quickly, but the city’s small enough that you won’t stay lost for long. Check out the local artisans specializing in ceramics, the food shops selling tasty meats and cheeses, and more than a score of Romanesque churches.

Segovia gets pretty full in summer, so book your hotel well ahead. Two hotels I’ve stayed at and enjoyed are Natura and Los Linajes. Spring and fall are better times to go, especially September when it’s still warm but the school groups and university backpackers have left. Winter can be bitterly cold.

There are plenty of places to eat. Many restaurants serve two local specialties: cochinillo, roast suckling pig; and Judiones de la granja, which is faba beans with chorizo, garlic, and, if you’re being traditional, a pig’s ear! For a cheap lunch option find a place offering menú del día, a set menu where you have three or four choices for appetizer, main course, and dessert with a drink included. La Taberna de Abraham Seneor at Calle Judería Vieja 17 & 19 in the old Jewish quarter serves up a filling one for €11.90. There are also numerous cafes with outdoor seating in good weather. My favorite place to sit is Plazuela de San Martín, where you can gaze out on a sparkling fountain, a 15th century house, and a Romanesque church.

Tomorrow I’ll be talking more about the Alcázar, my favorite castle in Spain, and Wednesday I’ll be exploring the many beautiful churches of Segovia. Stay tuned!

Booking award tickets can be frustrating, unless you’re a pro

by Chris Owen on

Collecting reward points is often the easy part of the whole deal while redeeming them can be challenging. If we remember when and where to gather points though, they rack up fast. Still, when it comes to using them, the whole process may seem complicated and we may wonder if we used those points to our best advantage. One way to be sure is by using a professional, someone who lives and breathes the whole process and is passionate about it.

“Booking award tickets can be incredibly frustrating, yet if done correctly, incredibly rewarding” says PointsPros.com, an award travel booking service devoted to helping clients save “time, miles, frustration, and potentially thousands of dollars.”

Ben Schlappig of PointsPros is a college student, travel consultant and avid points collector who also writes the travel blog One Mile At A Time. Spending about a third of his nights in hotels, flying around 300,000 miles and visiting over 40 countries each year, Schlappig’s blog is a treasure chest of travel deals, bargains and shared experiences often not found elsewhere.

“After we analyze the best approach to take for booking your award, we find the award availability, assist you with transferring points as necessary, make the actual award booking, and select the best available seats for you” says PointPro’s easy to navigate website.

Leaving the complicated fee structures to the airlines. PointsPros pricing is simple, $150 for the first passenger on any type of award then $100 for each additional passenger on the same general trip. If they can’t find you a trip matching your specifications, there is no charge.

“Whether you’ve tried to book an award and the airlines have told you there is no availability for your desired trip, or you just want to make the booking process easier, let us put our expertise to work for you. You worked hard to earn those miles, so you shouldn’t have to work hard to redeem them.”

We ran across Ben following up on a story Gadling did about how to free frequent flyer miles by purchasing dollar coins a couple months ago.

“Just last week I came back from a trip from Australia and Singapore and Malaysia all in first class, just on miles,” Florida-based Schlappig says, adding “partly thanks to the dollar coin program.”

Is this service for everyone? Absolutely.

Those who don’t travel all that much can often benefit from having a professional take a look at this side of their travel plans. If the majority of ones travel points on a given airline are racked up buying non-air goods and services, odds are those people can use the help.

Savvy travelers with time on their hands can work through the process on their own. If for no other reason than to save time by having someone else do it, using a award travel booking service can do just that.

Even Road Warriors who sometimes feel like they know more about a particular reward program than the people on the other end of the phone when trying to redeem points can gain from occasionally letting a neutral professional dive in and see what they can do.

Services for booking award tickets like this are not a substitute for a good travel agent or booking travel however we have successfully done it in the past. But wise travelers know considering another element to incorporate into a total travel planning program is worth a look.

Flickr photo by Larry Johnson

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