We stopped first at my insistence at the Church of Vera Cruz down in the valley below Segovia. The church is an eleventh century church built by the Knights Templar, and is characteristically semi-round. I've had a fascination with the Knights Templar ever since I read Umberto Eco's Focault's Pendulum, and will always go out of my way to see a Templar church even though they're rarely interesting. I'm not sure why this book didn't spark a huge boom in Templar interest, as it's vastly superior to the silly Da Vinci Files, which basically rehashes the same plot as Focault's Pendulum. But since the Da Vinci book and movie I'm sure the lonely little Templar church is lonely no more.



There were some monasteries and convents in the general area as well, plus a mint where they converted the gold from the Latin American colonies into coins, but it's mostly ruins now, as you can see from the area around Somchai. The city of Segovia is draped along the hill behind him.