Spanish travels with the madre

So I apologize that I havn't been keeping the blog updated as of late but I would rather not post than bore you with irrelevant and bopring posts. However I think things should be looking up for the blog as a new chapter in the trip is about to begin as I travel to Germany and Italy and then onto Girona. Anyway mom arrived thursday and after spending my last night with my host family and last day of classes we headed off together in a rental car to explore the region of Castilla y Leon, the province that Salamanca is in. We spent friday afternoon in the Sierra de Francia. It's an area to the south west of Salamanca into the foothills of the mountasins; where we found some magical old villages that seemed from an entirely different time. After exploring here we moved on to find lodging in Segovia, about 2.5 hours away. We arrived in Segovia around 10 and had an adventure trying to navigate the streets of the old city to find our hostel and parking. After checking in we went out for a nice dinner around 11:30 (not unheard of in Spain), and then returned to crash in the hostel. In the morning we got our cafe con leche in the Plaza Mayor and then off to explore Segovia. Segovia offers 3 main attractions that we were able to visit. The first being a segment of an old roman acquiduct built around 100 bc without mortar! It is about 4 stories tall at its highest point and is absolutely amazing. The second was a castle that looked straight out of a Disney fairytale and in fact inspired the castle in Sleeping Beauty. The final attraction was a cathedral bording the plaza mayor which was also spectacular. We spent our secoind night in Segovia and then this morning headed off to the walled city of Avila (home to my favorite cyclist Carlos Sastre, unfortunatly he was not sited). But the wall was amazing. I can't imagine how these things were built without the use of modern machinery, its absolutely baffling. So we were able to meander along the wall and outside the city for a bit and then back to Salamanca for me to say bye to my host family and for my mom to move in with hers. At any rate we are all settled and tomorrow I'm off to Madrid in the afternoon to catch my evening flight to Germany to visit with Willi which I am so excited about and then on to 2 nights in Florence before flying to Cagliari to soke up some Mediteranian sun with Simone! So it has been a very exciting weekend with more fun on the horizon. I will try to get some pics up asap because my words (and probably the pictures for that matter) cannot come close to doing these things justice.