Segovia: Unfortunate Victim

I nearly missed my stop in Segovia because for some reason I thought there were two Segovia stops and I wanted the second one. Realizing my mistake at the last moment, I grabbed my backpack and got off the train just before it departed. A bus took me from the station to nearby Segovia's old Roman aqueduct, where my hostel was located. The staff were kind enough to give me suggestions on how to best spend the remainder of the day in Segovia and where to find the bus station that I would need to be at in the morning to get to Avila, the next town in line. To avoid potential problems the next day, I walked over to the bus station before checking out anything else in Segovia, just to make sure I knew the route. With the few hours I had in the afternoon I walked around Segovia's small old city and checked out the aqueduct, cathedral, castle and a few other places. I unfortunately got to the castle too late in the day to go inside. Had I not screwed up earlier in the day back in Madrid, I would have had another two hours in Segovia. On the way back towards the hostel, in the late afternoon, I took a detour and walked along a path by a stream that one of the hostel staff had suggested. A serene stroll through a quiet park with autumn foliage was probably just what I needed, after a morning of self-inflicted travel stress. I got back to the aqueduct as the sun was setting, coloring the stones in a light shades of red and purple. Cool winds from the Atlantic were blowing in. I felt kind of bad that Segovia had gotten shortchanged by my circumstances. Granted, from my time walking around Segovia I knew that I could only get at most a single full day out of it, but another few hours would have made for a much fuller experience.

The next day I got up and made sure to get to the bus station early. Of course, the bus was running late that day, and with the construction going on at the bus station I was starting to wonder if I was standing around in the wrong place, but it came, and I got on. The next city was Avila, which I wasn't even staying the night at, but merely spending a few hours at on my way to another city.