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!

Six Reasons to Love the Outer Banks

by Paul Brady on


You’ve seen the stickers. White ovals, with the trio of letters “OBX,” an American riff on European nationality decals, they’re a sign of allegiance to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I always found them annoying: How could some mid-Atlantic beach really be that wonderful? And why would you want to brag about your vacation on the back of your car?

Turning onto the beach road in Kill Devil Hills, with the dunes to my left, houses on stilts looking out over the water and kids slowly pedaling cruiser bikes, the reason became apparent. The Outer Banks are so wonderful, you can’t help but evangelize on their behalf. Here are six reasons why.

Traveling the American Road – Exploring the Birthplace of Aviation


The history: This is where aviation got its start, when Orville and Wilbur Wright finally got their Flyer into the air for a series of short trips on December 17, 1903. The site, commonly called Kitty Hawk but now in the incorporated city of Kill Devil Hills, is a protected national memorial, administered by the National Park Service. For just $4 a person, you can run along the actual path of the first powered flights in human history. Wilbur’s longest ride lasted 59 seconds; it took me 48 seconds to run the 852 feet.

The beach: It’s not the widest beach I’ve ever seen, but the Outer Banks offers miles of uninterrupted strands along the Atlantic. Because the barrier islands here are so narrow, you’re never more than a few minutes from the water. Don’t leave your rental house or hotel without a swimsuit.

The lighthouses: For a place known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic for all its shipwrecks, there are plenty of lighthouses to see. The most famous is on Cape Hatteras, a black-and-white tower that tops 200 feet. It’s open for climbs in season, as are others like the Currituck Beach and Ocracoke lighthouses.

The activities: One reason the Wright Brothers chose the Outer Banks for their experiments in flight is the area’s consistent ocean breezes. Those same winds make for excellent kite surfing, parasailing and even hang gliding. Kitty Hawk Kites is the leader in teaching visitors to hang glide in a single day at Jockey’s Ridge State Park, where sand dunes provide soft landings for students.

The people: I was fortunate enough to stay with the parents of a friend of a friend, a family that’s lived in Kill Devil Hills for 31 years. In a house built on stilts, and listing slightly from hurricane damage, my hosts shared stories of the place and its cast of characters-over beers pulled from an ice-filled cooler on their screened-in porch. For dinner, soft-shell crabs were fried in a pot of hot oil and served along side the best fried green tomatoes I’ve ever tasted. When I said I couldn’t thank them enough for the hospitality, they asked why I couldn’t just stay another night.

The ring toss: My hosts introduced me to ring toss. It’s not the carnival game but a test of dexterity that involves swinging a small metal loop tied to a string across the lawn to a hook mounted on a tree. It’s by turns infuriating and magical and maddeningly addictive. I’d seen it once before, in Maine, but not with the ubiquity it has in the Outer Banks. A trip here without it wouldn’t be complete.

Russia celebrates 450th anniversary of St. Basil’s Cathedral

by Sean McLachlan on

It’s the most recognizable icon in Russia, reproduced on millions of postcards, books, and websites. St. Basil’s in Moscow is a colorful cathedral that’s celebrating its 450th anniversary this year. As part of the celebration, the cathedral is opening an exhibition tomorrow dedicated to the mad holy man for whom the cathedral is named.

St. Basil lived during the time of Ivan the Terrible (reigned 1533-1584) and soon became a local celebrity by going naked even in winter and speaking out against the czar. For most people this would have led to a visit to one of Ivan’s overworked executioners, but mad saints have always been respected in Russian culture and Ivan was scared of Basil.

Basil was born a serf in 1468 or 1469 and developed a habit of going naked weighed down by chains. He was a bit of a Robin Hood figure, stealing from shops and giving his loot to the poor. He criticized Ivan the Terrible for killing thousands of innocent people and not giving enough money to the church. When he died, Ivan acted as pallbearer at his funeral.

Later, Ivan the Terrible built the cathedral in 1561 to celebrate defeating the Mongols. He decided to build it atop the grave of the Basil, in order to honor the man in death who had mocked him in life.

The cathedral has just finished a $14 million restoration in anticipation of the anniversary.

[Photo © by James G. Howes, 2009.]

Inside STS135: The Experience at the Final Shuttle Launch

by Paul Brady on


I got to William J. Menzo Park in Titusville at about 3 am, in a bad mood and not sure if the shuttle would even launch. NASA said the odds for departure were only 30 percent. But until NASA officially scrubbed the Friday morning liftoff, I’d be here, set up in a tent with provisions packed in a Styrofoam cooler I’d just bought.

The shuttle’s been ferrying people to space for just a few more years than I’ve been alive–and today’s mission was my last chance to see the space ship of my generation.


It’s a logistical nightmare, seeing a launch. There’s no certainty the weather will cooperate, as I and a reported one million other spectators know all too well. Hotels in Titusville and along the Space Coast charge incredible prices, which isn’t exactly unfair–this is the hottest ticket in Florida!–but it does put rooms out of reach of many. And so we drive, in cars, in SUVs, in station wagons and RVs and camper vans with pop tops. Parked on sidewalks and lawns, along the sides of roads, there seems to be a suspension of rules.

It’s the same in the park, where according to a sign, there’s no overnight camping. (Broke that ordinance.) There’s also no alcohol without a permit. (Plenty of people not heeding that one.) The fires that were going last night must violate some rule, but I’m not sure which one. But there’s a singular focus here, and the only real crime would be to block someone’s tripod-mounted camera.

Lenses bristle along the coast, set up since the middle of the night to stake out an ideal vantage point. It’s an outlandish collection of gizmos–all manner of video recorders, lenses bigger than magnum wine bottles, boom mikes with wind screens–that reminds me that half the fun of space exploration is taking photos of what happens when we explore space.

With 56 minutes left until launch, a duo strums a guitar and plays a drum, while spectators smoke cigarettes out of habit or nervousness or need to do something, anything to pass the slowly ticking minutes. Kids are slathered with sunscreen and bug spray by parents who no doubt brought them so the youngsters could one day say they’d seen a shuttle launch. I wonder if they’ll even remember the experience, like many of my generation can only hazily remember the Challenger disaster, the defining public tragedy of our lives, at least through September 10, 2001.

With five minutes left to go, someone in the crowd shouts out “FIVE MINUTES.” We’re all excited, the atmosphere tense with the hope that we’ll see the launch but wary of a last-second call-off.

Two minutes. A duo of military fighter jets fly over, making a deafening racket, drowning out the sound of radios broadcasting the mission control chatter. Final camera checks are made.

We all hear the words “main engine start” at seven seconds and a tiny spark, 10 miles away but very distinct, appears. Breath is drawn. I don’t remember hearing the rest of the countdown.

A giant cloud of steam and exhaust explodes, silently because the sound hasn’t yet reached us, and Atlantis surges off the pad. We start clapping and cheering, with tunnel vision chasing the craft up into the low-hanging clouds that threatened the launch minutes before. After another minute–or what feels like a minute–the exhaust stream pokes out from a gap in the clouds, and we can see the shuttle again, already hundreds of miles away, tiny and flickering on its way to space. Applause goes up again, as those of us who see it point it out to those who don’t.

And then it’s gone.

Later, as the basso profundo of the rockets finally rolled across the water, I talked to Tim, a local construction worker who’s seen more than 100 launches, including the very first and today’s, the very last. It was a celebratory day, with our four astronauts on the way to orbit, and a sad day. It’s the end of the program, a retirement that Tim says will be “devastating” to the region. There were little kids running around, here for the last shuttle launch, but probably too young to ever fully remember it.

Colonial Williamsburg: Made in America

by Paul Brady on


The last time I visited Colonial Williamsburg, I was about half as tall as I am now. Would it still be worth seeing-or as fantastic as I remembered-now that I’m a grown up? I drove south from Washington, D.C. to find out, without doing a lick of planning or advance research. This would be a visit informed only by my fuzzy memories of hiking around in the heat and talking to people dressed in period costumes.

It turned out to be just as cool as I remembered, even if it was nearly 100 degrees.

Traveling the American Road – Colonial Williamsburg: Made in America


The city spans 301 acres, and it’s accurate to describe it as a village, since people actually live here around the clock. Staffers occupy buildings in the historic section and artisans working in Williamsburg create the tools, clothing and even beer that’s needed on site. While it sounds like a marketing line, it’s true that this place is much more than a theme park. It’s a sort of living museum, and what they’re preserving is the knowledge and history of small-scale American manufacturing and handicraft.

Take the milliner’s shop, where I met a tailor who’d been apprenticing for seven years, showing off a dress crafted in 60 hours of stitching. I learned about movable type from a printer, probably running one of the most profitable presses in the country, given the current state of publishing. A youngster was talking the trade with a blacksmith, the former an avid hobbyist in the art of mashing metals, picking up tips from the professional. A wheelwright described how to build an ox cart. (They can last years as long as you scoop the manure out and bring it in from the rain.)

As I’ve found stories of resurgent places, the made in America element of Williamsburg captivated me in its historic rather than innovative focus. In other words, there’s a difference between Korean tacos and hand-hammering a pewter cup. But by quietly building things by hand, the craftsmen and women of Williamsburg are doing something very, very cool-and something I didn’t have the chance to appreciate as a kid.