Many great memories come out from this picture of Michael and I in Segovia, Spain. The first memories will come from observations from the picture. Then I will talk about the town and how our travels were going.
First thing to observe is that Michael and I are both in the picture. Over our travels Michael became stellar at setting the camera up on a stone or wall, etc. so that both of us could be in the picture. This is a fine example of his great work.
Secondly, notice the backpacks. This is a day we were carrying everything on our backs all day long. Due to our limited budget and necessity of many trips, we didn't really use public transportation very often while site seeing. The wonderful warm sun was out this day, so it made the walking sometimes sweaty and tiring. But as you can see, we were enjoying the sites and Segovia.
Thirdly, there is an incredible aqueduct in the background. This was the first aqueduct that I had ever seen in person and the precise mathematical measurements and calculations astound me. I am very impressed at the work they were able to do with these massive stones and then to make it so precise.
Segovia was part of a short trip outside of Madrid about a week into our France and Spain tour. We did 'rough' it for the most part through these two weeks. We got the basic hostels and shared bathrooms, etc. But our hotel in Segovia was very nice. We had our own private bath and it was pretty with a great balcony. That evening we went searching for our typical sandwich dinning, but we were unable to find any restaurants with cheaper finger foods. We ended up splurging at a nice restaurant close to the hotel. It was a great dinner out. The we walked around this romantic Spanish town at dark. The aquiduct was lit up and as we were walking we looked down the hillside to see a bull fight. We could see in the stadium, although it was far. Finally we could tell the bull had died and the fight was over.
Shortly after this trip to Segovia, we had our first problem while traveling in France and Spain. We missed the train we were to take to Granada because of construction on our subway! Luckily we had Euro passes, but it took a lot of work to find an alternative route so that we could make our overnight train to Barcelona.
This was Michael's and my first time to really travel together and set up our own plans. We developed a great method of traveling throughout Europe and then we got some good experience throughout the rest of the year. We really can do Europe in under $50 a day per person including transportation, etc. That was important because then we could do more trips during our year in Slovakia. One of my favorite tricks is to find a great park in the city and find a grocery store. We buy cheese and bread and maybe Nutella. We sit in the park to eat dinner and enjoy all the people walking, skating, running, playing, walking dogs. And of course enjoy each other. Eating dinner in the parks is one of my favorite memories from our travels in Europe.
