If you saw my blog for Avila last week, then you don't need to click this link. But something appears to have gone wrong with the email subscriptions, which are sent to you by Google's Feedburner service. Fingers crossed you all get this one OK. I've tried troubleshooting it - I am nominally an IT professional, after all - but I can't see what went wrong. Maybe Google's algorithm has assumed that I'm a Russian fake news cyber-spam-bot? Has anything been happening in the world of politics that I should know about?
Here in Spain the US election coverage has been pretty wall-to-wall, just like everywhere else. The newsreaders, needing to read out Trump's name using Spanish vowel sounds, and thus unable to simply say 'Trmp' like English people do, are faced with a stark choice between 'Troomp' and 'Traamp'. The latter usually wins.
As for the public, they're interested, but not quite as emotionally invested as we are in the UK. Perhaps they feel, to a certain extent, concern for their fellow hispanohablantes in central and south America, and thus generally favour Presidents who take a softer line on immigration, both legal and illegal. Incidentally, the one foreign country that Spaniards seem determined to completely ignore is the one right next door. Watching the news every day, it's like Portugal doesn't even exist. This is of course gross hypocrisy from a man who's been to over 50 countries, but not to Wales...
Watching the teary-eyed victory speeches, and indeed the spittle-flecked refusals to concede, it strikes me that things always sound smarter - or at least less stupid - when they're spoken by foreigners. When Trump's speeches are subtitled or dubbed into Spanish, the translators always remove the stumbles and mistakes and other infelicities. There is no Spanish word for 'bigly'. This is vaguely similar to how footballers always sound more cultured during post-match interviews when they're speaking in French, but only until you discover that they're actually talking about "giving it 110% for the full 90 minutes Brian at the end of the day."
My longer-suffering readers may recall that I was in Cincinnati for the last election in 2016. After one big USA road trip under Bush Jr, and four big USA road trips under Obama, I didn't have any during the Trump presidency. (I did have one highly enjoyable spell in Chicago with friends last year, but that was just a casual weekend visit, as you do.) Now I'm looking forward to my next USA road trip during the presidency of Kamala Harris. Because frankly I think the Covid pandemic will live longer than Joe Biden will.
Back to reality. It's only a short bus ride from Avila to Segovia. The latter is high-up and windswept, like the former, but it's a very different kind of place. If anything it reminds me of my time in South America: the ramshackle houses sprawled across the hillsides, the ornate railings on the balconies, the endless little plazas and churches...it all had me thinking about blood feuds and knife fights even before I chanced upon a copy of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 'Chronicle Of A Death Foretold' on the bookshelf in my little studio apartment. And indeed that apartment is literally on the Street Of Life And Death.
Segovia contains arguably the best-preserved of all surviving Roman aqueducts. We don't know for sure exactly when it was built, but certainly it's not much less than 2,000 years old. The tall section that you see in my photo is only one part of the structure: you can follow it round to the south and east, and it gets progressively less tall as you go uphill, so that the top of it remains flat, obviously.
Apart from the aqueduct, Segovia is mainly famous for its signature dish of roast suckling pig. See Edd vs Food. It was my duty to indulge, and I did so. Pigly.
 |
| What have the Romans ever done for us? |
 |
| View to the south-east from above the aqueduct |
 |
| Inside Segovia cathedral |
 |
| The Alcazar Frankly, from this angle I think it looks like a Nintendo game backdrop. |
 |
| A more pleasing view of the Alcazar, from below and to the northwest |
 |
| I'm stupefied by the name of this place. Whatever a 'selfish poke' is, it has no place in polite society. Actually I've just googled it and 'poke' is apparently a Hawaiian seafood dish. |
 |
| Edd vs Food #90 Roast suckling pig. Complete with cute little trotter at the right hand side. Culinary highlight of this trip so far. From the Asador David Guijarro. Not from Selfish Poke (see picture above)... ...otherwise it would have been a pig in a Poke. Ha ha. |
 |
| Bohemian little studio, with balcony |
