Our Spanish-American Day of Thanks

We slept fabulously in our Sheraton Sweet Sleepr Bed, and woke up early on Thursday - Thanksgiving Day - with intentions to be as American as possible. This Thanksgiving  was the first either JCB or I have spent outside the US, and given the plethora of pork around us, we were both sad to be missing out on Thanksgiving feasts. 

But I had a great idea, if I do say so myself, to order "El Desayuno Americano" off the room service menu for a delightful American Breakfast in bed to start our day off right. And since we had also picked up a bottle of rose wine - yes, rose, which I now refer to as "breakfast wine" - I thought that adding some chilled wine to our American Breakfast  would be a great way for us to get over missing such treats as sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, stuffing, cranberries, and of course, turkey, during our families' Thanksgiving dinners. 

Boy was I right. I cannot wait to incorporate more breakfast wines into my life back in SF. We ate our meal, which also included American Coffee (and lots of it - not just a small cup!) and raddled off the things for which we are both thankful. It was a pretty special morning.

After breakfast, JCB and I got showered and dressed for a day in Segovia. And I will admit that for once, JCB was ready to leave before I was. (Something over which I am still amazed, but for which I am nonetheless thankful..) Before getting in the car and heading to Segovia, we walked around our hotel grounds to check out the Monastery of El Paular, the main attraction of Rascafria. 

I then took the wheel for our hour-long drive to Segovia, which in itself was amazing. The steep, winding roads took us through forests and over a mountain pass. Neither of us expected to drive through such a beautiful, snow covered mountain range in Spain. Especially not in November. The winding roads were quite scary at times. JCB in the passenger seat practicing Spanish ("Dos libros rojos...") with me bracing the wheel through switchback after switchback. We continued on for quite a while rather peacefully, when all of a sudden, after a rather sharp curve, I screamed.

"There's a BULL in the road!" And out of shear panic - I was SO afraid the bull was going to ram into the car - I sped off, while JCB fumbled for the camera. He was a little pissed, as he (reasonably) had wanted a picture of the bull. But my heart was pounding in fear. That bull was huge. HUGE. But in hindsight, I guess I wish I hadn't been so jumpy. I imagine it is doubtful the bull would have ran into the car. As JCB pointed out - in Spanish, I was so proud - "El coche no es rojo." (The car is not red.) So there is no proof of our run-in with a bull on the country-mountain road of Spain. But we swear, it happened.

We made it to Segovia not long after our run-in with the bull. We found parking outside of the center of town, and began walking in the very brisk November air towards the tourist attractions. Our main goals for the day were to see the Roman Aqueduct ruins, La Catedral de Segovia, y El Alcazar (castle). Each were amazing. It seems that our itinerary of cities is in the perfect order, as the architecture in each city seems to get better and better. 

Perhaps it is because we're both engineers, but the aqueducts were our favorite sight of the day. The Romans somehow constructed the aqueduct - which is 2950 feet long and stretches from the Sierra de Guadarrma mountains to the edge of town - without mortar. Just large granite stones placed on top of one another. It just doesn't make sense that this work could have been done 2000 years ago. I also don't understand why the people of Segovia didn't just build their town 2950 feet closer to the mountains, but that is a rather moot point in this day in age.

La Catedral was also impressive, but a rather quick stop for us. I think we've seen our fill of churches by now. So we wandered through town, lunched and shopped, before heading to El Alcazar. This castle is one of the most famous castles in all of Spain, because so many kings have lived there, but also because Walt Disney chose this castle as his model for the castle in Sleeping Beauty. The town eats that factoid up, by the way - there is a bar not far from the castle called Disney Bar. (We didn't stop there...) 

After climbing to the top of the tower and taking a few snapshots, JCB and I were ready to head "home" to Rascafria. Segovia was great, but after a few days in very quiet small towns, we were a little taken aback by so many people, not to mention so many Americans. I love how after a week in Spain and four lessons of Rosetta Stone, JCB does not want to hear any English. 

Back in Rascafria, we dined on more American food in honor of Thanksgiving. I had a vegetarian sandwich with potato chips, JCB a hamburger with French Fries. Glorious! We relaxed in our room with some more cheap but delicious Spanish wine, watched a couple episodes of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" and drifted off into a peaceful, thankful, Spanish slumber.