Segovia, España

Beyond the Classroom: Excursions that amaze

GEO Segovia allows students to learn through organized experiences both inside and outside of the classroom. Each week, a portion of class time is spent on walking tours to historical sites throughout Segovia. Short class excursions and day trips allow students to see, experience, and feel rich history of Spain first hand. Note: Not all of the following excursions are offered in any one term.

Here's a selection of excursions offered beyond Segovia:

• La Granja de San Ildefonso 

 Situated 11 kilometers from Segovia capital, at the foot of the Guadarrama mountain range, this historically important city includes the Palacio Real de San Ildefonso, the summer home of King Felipe V, with its Versailles-inspired gardens and fountains. La Granja is also home to the Real Fábrica de Cristales, which once made all the crystal for the royal family of Spain.


• Museums of Madrid 
 This excursion includes the famous El Prado and Reina Sofia museums. El Museo del Prado features one of the world’s finest collections of European artwork, and holds the single best collection of Spanish art. Here you will see the work of Goya, El Greco, Rubens, Titian, Velázquez, and more. Reina Sofia is Span's national museum of 20th-century art. Highlights of the museum include excellent collections of Spain's two greatest 20th-century masters, Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí. The most famous masterpiece in the museum is Picasso's painting Guernica.

• Medieval Route 

This excursion includes visits to the castle of Coca, a 16th century monastery and the winery "Bodegas Herrero". 

CLOISTER OF THE MONASTERY OF SANTA MARÍA DE NIEVA

In this monastery, the Hieronymite monks in the Middle Ages started a thriving wine business. They used the wine as sacramental wine during masses, for meals, and also commercialized it as a source of income. From then until nowadays this profitable business in the wine industry has boosted the economy in the area. Regarding art, in addition to its chapterhouse, stands out its beautiful cloister made up of eighty-seven columns with their respective capitals, all of them different and representing biblical and secular works, such as hunting motifs, war scenes and an agricultural calendar.

 WINERY “HERRERO”

The municipality of Nieva is located in the Segovian countryside, in the biggest pine forest in Europe. Here, vineyards are extensively grown. This town is located in an area with a certificate of origin for wines named “Rueda”, so there are several wineries in the area that produce nationally renowned wines. We visit one of those wineries,“HERRERO”, where we will be able to try the appreciated white wines of Nieva made exclusively with grapes from the province of Segovia (wine from these autochthonous strains that are more than 100 years old is called "PIE FRANCO”).This organic winery is a family-run business that markets throughout Spain and also exports to the United States and Europe.

MEDIEVAL CASTLE OF COCA

The castle of Coca is one of the best Mudejar castles in the world. We will visit the part of the castle open to visits, another part is a school for studying a forestry engineer degree. The students carry out their internships in the largest pine forest in Europe, where pine resin is exploited. On account of all this, the area is very popular for rural tourism, offering a large number of rural houses to stay in. In addition, this entire area is part of the pilgrim’s journey “Camino de Santiago”, this fact also helping the economic impact of the area.

 


• Valsain Mountains 

 Spain´s Sierra de Guadarrama national park is not only a historic Spanish Civil War battle site, but was also King Carlos III’s royal fishing and hunting grounds. It was here, too, that Ernest Hemingway situated his famous novel For Whom the Bell Tolls .  This excursion gives students an excursion to channel their outdoorsy sides, while learning about Spain's past.