Avila, Segovia, San Lorenzo de Escorial

OK, so as you can tell by the title we had a bit to do today. So after we got the van ready to go and made a quick visit to the hotel we were off. Avila was our first stop for the day. It is another medieval town centre that we wandered around and enjoyed quite a bit. But seeing as how we arrived at lunch hour, everything was closed and the streets were pretty much deserted. The streets were once again cobbled which always makes walking interesting and the town was partially surrounded by a wall.
There wasn’t much else to do here, so after about an hour of exploring we ventured off to our next stop for the day, Segovia. It was a simple drive to Segovia and when we arrived we lucked out on a great place to park. It was in a hilltop field and seemed to be near some kind of church as there were a bunch of crosses on the hill. The spot itself was free and offered an amazing panorama of the city. Right away we could see the Roman aqueduct and the large church looming over the city. The tourist office was located at the base of the aqueduct, so it was pretty easy to figure out which direction we needed to head to. The aqueduct was huge, about 138 meters tall and was still in use by the town. While walking through the streets we actually saw running water pouring down a hand rail along some steps. It was pretty amazing to see this huge stone structure and to know they didn’t use a drop of mortar to build it. We decided to take the walk suggested by the tourist office to the other town sites, the huge church and the Alcazar. The young girl at the tourist office was from America, which surprised us. The church was a church (no surprises there) and the Alcazar was indeed a fortress turned into a museum, which we didn’t visit. The only thing that mattered was that during our walk, Julie managed to find herself a picnic basket for 20 euros. She was so happy about this find. To quote her, “It’s exactly like I wanted”.

I guess the only problem with buying it, is that we live in a van. Guess we will have to look into shipping it back. The last stop for the day wasn’t actually to sight see at all, which was good for us because we didn’t arrive in town until 8pm. We are using Escorial as a base for exploring Madrid, Spain’s capital and its largest city. Since we arrived so late, we opted to free camp for the night along a somewhat busy street before checking into the campsite in the morning. It’s still cold at night so we want to get south soon.