Mooooooat

We woke up late and mildly hungover. We figured it would be no problem to just roll out of bed whenever and catch a train to Segovia when we got to the train station, because we thought the left every hour. Which is a lie. After figuring out the metro system again and making it to the right train station, we stand around in utter confusion at the ticket vending machines. None of them said Segovia. Shit.

Well, there's a place with a bunch of people running ticketing booths. Let's stand in line. Oh, wrong line? Oh, we need a number? okay. How about two numbers because we can't even figure out the machine that gives us a ticket to get us to a person that gives us a ticket? Goddammit.

We get in line, but we're still confused. Is this the right line? We want to buy tickets for Toledo, too. Can we do both here? Well, we don't need a ticket to be in this line...so, how about we wait here, and then someone else goes to another line after our number is called? what the hell is going on?

We stood there staring at our slow line as the number called got higher and higher. Finally, we got to the window, and the guy thankfully spoke English so we bought our tickets rather quickly. As soon as we finished with him, our number was called for the ticket line for Toledo tickets.

"Do you speak english?" "no."

Fuck it. I think he said that to get rid of us, but he underestimated how tenacious and stupid we are. We took out a notebook and wrote "Toledo?" and he gestured and said "manana?" "si!" and then asked what we assumed what time we wanted to leave. I wrote 01:00h and ang was like, "no, 13." so I'm all "I know!" and wrote 01:00h again, crossed it out, and finally managed to write "13:00h?" and he took the notebook and shook his head and wrote out times. We circled one. He took it back and wrote more times down for the return trip. We argued, and circled another one. Bam, tickets, bitches.

Unfortunately, the train didn't actually leave for another couple of hours. There was a restarant across the street from the station, and we were starving, so we made the mistake of eating there. We got our required croquetas and some stuffed peppers. The parts of the peppers that were warm were delicious, but the still-frozen half was not so good. Ang had made it her mission to conquor cafe con hielo, and we figured out you are supposed to dump the sugar in BEFORE you pour it over ice. There was a guy standing in the corner the whole time pulling the lever on a slot machine without even looking at it. Classy joint.

Our train arrived after a while, and we all took 30-minute power naps on the way to Segovia. We pulled in at a tiny little train station that appeared to prettymuch be in the middle of nowhere. We had no idea what we were supposed to do, there were no notices or bus schedules or anything, but everyone seemed to be climbing onto the single bus that waited outside. It seemed obvious after the fact, but once it left we figured that was our bus and there wouldn't be another for 20 minutes.

But hey! A coffee shop!

We went into the little coffee shop at the train station and ordered cafe con hielo. Angie and I walked away, but apparently Tracey was at the counter long enough to hear the lady serving us hiss at her coworker, "Americanosss!" as if the devil himself had entered the store. It was an enlightening moment. We thought we were just being crazy up until then that the Spanish didn't like specifically US, but that confirmed it. And we were not advertising we were Americans in any way - we were doing our best to look and sound the opposite, trying to speak spanish as much as we could, but it didn't matter. Apparently they could figure us out instantly.

The bus arrived and we got on it, eagerly staring out the window for a giant castle to come into view. As we went over a hill, there was certainly a castle - but it's so small! That can't be THE castle, can it? I think it must be it. I mean, there can't be any more castles hiding around here, right?

It was totally the castle. To be fair, much more impressive close up.

We got off at the aqueducts, and hacked out some spanish with the driver to figure out when to be back at the bus stop for our train back. We went to the info booth, where the lady there outlined a route for us to take up to the castle and then back, hitting all the important sights along the way. And, there actually WAS another castle - bonus castle high five! She told us it would take 15 minutes to walk to the first castle and then another 10 or so past that to the Alcazar de Segovia, the disney castle.

It was a lie. As we began walking, the streets were lined with shops, and we had to stop at prettymuch all of them. It took us probably two hours to walk the 15 minutes she had claimed it would take. That's okay, though, because we found dicks.

We walked into a little souvenir shop, not even a good one, and were about to leave when I looked down and found a basket with 3 carved wooden bottle openers. In the shape of dicks. I grabbed one, and presented it to Tracey, who lit up like a Christmas tree and demanded to know where I had found it. We decided that it was fate that there were 3 of us and 3 dicks to be had. Snickering and full of shame, we brought our dicks to the register and the little old lady didn't even bat an eye as she carefully wrapped each one in neon green wrapping paper with bright pink flowers all over it. When she finished, we all looked at eachother and asked her, "mas?" and she nodded and left the store to get more dicks for us. We bought 8 in total. And that lady wrapped them all, only cracking a grin when Ang shrugged apologetically and told her, "americanos."

[video]

We stopped into one little grocery store to see if they had the wine we took a picture of from the madrid sangria place. They didn't have that, but we did buy some of these:

[picture]

Eventually, we got to the first castle. Right next to it was a shop with a nasty old man that yelled at a kid for touching something. I took a stealth picture of KKK members on the shelf. I undertand they're probably crusaders or something, but c'mon:

[picture]

Also, I just googled the first castle, and it's not even a castle. It's a cathedral. Built in 1525. We probably should have read some history of...anywhere.

[pictures of cathedral]

At this point, we realize it has taken us two hours to get through a supposedly 15 minute walk, and we had somewhere around two more hours to finish the rest of the walk, go through the castle, and then get back to the bus stop to make it to the train in time.

We ran the rest of the way and pined at stores we wanted to go in. We did grab some castle-shaped sangria pitchers that are ballin', though.

The castle itself was impressive the closer we got to it. It was one of the castles that was the inspiration for the Disney castle, and you could clearly see it with the blue-capped pointed spires and A MOAT

[moat picture]

[moat video]

I was obnoxious as I just repeated, "moat moat moat moooooooooooat moat moat it has a moat moat". To be fair, the moat was sorta dry, but it was totally there. And glorious. Exhausted, we thought we would have time to sit and eat and enjoy the castle-y goodness, but the time constraints required we march on. We went to the ticketing building, and the guy running it told us that we could pay a bit extra to be able to take 153 stairs to the top. I said hell no, especially after seeing the warning sign for "people who are unhealthy should not attempt this".

We divided and conquored. We sent the high-heeled and rather healthy Ang up to the top with the good camera while Tracey and I ran through the rest of the castle with her phone camera. The castle was pretty small on the inside, or at least what was available for viewing was. There was a room with a bed, which would be fine, but this statue stared down at the bed like a creeper:

and then there was this:

[boy]

ZOOM

[boy's eyes: not. okay.]

We also played the "ladies in waiting" game, that I failed at but that Tracey was clearly born to do:

And there were super detailed ceilings:

[ceilings]

and more creepers.

[me behind column]

We eventually reach the end of the castle and had a brief moment of "oh shit, where do we meet Ang?" before she came running from down a hallway. We had managed to accomplish our missions at exactly the same time. Which was more impressive from our perspective, because she had to climb 153 of these things up AND down:

[ang stairs: and IN HEELS.]

But I think it was worth it, because she got these pictures at the top (BUT NO SELFIE WTF):

[pictures]

We trekked back a different route, with noticeably less shops, through the jewish quarter. I kind of wish I had more history on this area, it was actually really pretty.

[picture]

Our feet fucking fell off, though. At least mine did. And we kept going uphill. It really wasn't okay. Eventually we made it back to the aqueducts - shit, did I mention aqueducts yet? Yeah, there were sweet roman aqueducts, too.

[pictures]

We got on the bus early and stuffed our faces with grapes because we hadn't actually eaten anything besides half-frozen peppers before we got to Segovia. Because we're smart like that. We took a nap on the train again, and had the brilliant idea to get off at Sol, and go back to the spot we were at the night before. I don't know about everyone else, but I had a severe craving for pasta. I love pasta. Pasta is the shit. And last night, we had noticed the restaurant behind the awesome sangria place served some mighty fine-looking pasta.

As soon as we found the street again and sat at the pasta place, the sangria guy noticed us and was all, "hey!" and we assured him we'd be going there next. Ang and I went back and forth with what to order before Tracey told us to let her get her own bowl of pasta. Then I wanted my own bowl, and Ang ended up with her own bowl by default. Which basically marked the first time in the whole trip we all ordered something for ourselves. I got a bacon carbonara, which was fucking amazing, and Tracey got some shrimp pesto thing, and according to her, it was also amazing even though the shrimp still had their heads. I tried shrimp once again, and still didn't like it, and Tracey and Ang confirmed that if I didn't like that shrimp then I would never like shrimp and I felt like I could finally lay my socially-driven need to like shrimp to rest. Ang got a rather lackluster bowl of pasta. Sucker!

We eventually finished eating and left the restaurant immediately. And by left, I mean we walked two feet to the table next to us that belonged to the sangria-of-the-Gods restaurant. By then, we had checked a few liquor stores out and so we could buy the overpriced wine there relatively guilt-free. We told the guy we wanted 3 bottles of wine, and he was so happy about it that he gave us a glass of the wine on the house. It was a red, and I don't like reds and have no level of sophistication when it comes to wine, but I'm pretty sure that was a mighty fine red. We got the bill, and he had taken a good 10-15% off the bill just...because. We thanked him, gave him a ridiculous tip, and wrote him a note that he and the sangria were our favorite out of all of Spain. He gave us kisses on our cheeks and pointed to the trip advisor sticker on the front of the restaurant and told us (I think) his name was Daniel. We were kinda in love with him. And, unfortunately, couldn't go back on our last night because it would just be stalking at that point.

[daniel]
  
After that, it was about 1 or 2 AM or something like that. I don't remember. It was late. We went back to the hotel, and I told everyone that since it was our last night that we could stay out late, we had to go clubbing. We took a good hour and a half to get ready. I had printed out a list of best Madrid nightclubs, and the first one on the list was Ohm, which was within easy walking distance. Dressed once again like hookers, we went to Ohm, and ended up having to pay something like $15 EACH to get into the place. Which should have tipped us off, but whatever. We went in and got drinks and stood there for quite a while before we realized that we had accidentally gone to a gay strip club. For real. It took us a good 10 minutes to even realize that because everyone dresses way too damn nice in Europe. Even worse, the strippers were actually really bad dancers. Actually, I think all the Spanish are kinda bad dancers, but if you're being paid to do it (and do it naked) you should probably be able to do better than stand there swaying your hips. One guy tried to hit on Tracey in rapid-fire Spanish and she smiled and nodded until he went away.

At that point, they told me we they wanted to go. Which, frankly, since it took us over an hour to get ready and a 15 euro cover was involved to only stay for 20 minutes, made me walk off back to the hotel and leave them for dead.

Mooooooooat.