Saturday June 12, 2010
A group of nine kids took an hour-long bus ride (half of what the Renfe train would cost! Yay!) to Toledo in the morning to visit, what is supposedly one of the most historically city in the world. I couldn’t get a wink of sleep, because damn kids sitting behind me decided to talk (yell) in some incomprehensible (by me) Spanish dialect, kick my chair without warning multiple times, and grab the head of my chair (and my hair with it) without reason. I swear, they were lucky I didn’t have my switchblade (or shotgun) on me that day.
It was pouring in Toledo, like, so foggy and wet we couldn’t admire the buildings very well. Walking around in umbrellas and jumping over puddles in the cobblestoned streets wasn’t exactly ideal for sightseeing. Cameras were dangerously getting wet (good thing I don’t have a functioning camera to get wet, right? L Oh the sour lemonade of it all.). We visited the Museo de Santa Cruz, a free museum that featured a small permanent collection of El Greco and ceramics. It certainly was touristy. Everybody loves free things!
We tried to visit the Alcázar (castle), finding the only entrance at the Biblioteca Regional, but as we went up the stone steps with all the other umbrella-wielding tourists, the security guard turned us away as he ushered library-goers out. He said the library was closed for the day, and that the alcazar wasn’t going to be opened until the end of May due to construction. Damn. What’s up places needing construction? It totally ruins sightseeing! That’s okay, though. Situated at the highest point of the city for security reasons, the castle, although quite large, wasn’t all too exciting from the outside. It was quite rectangular with large towers on each corner. I’m sure it’s very beautiful on the inside, but the outside just looked like the experimental castle I built when I played the Sims (Living Large, yo!) back in the day. Yes, that’s right, I constructed castles instead of boring rectangular houses in real-life simulation computer games when I was young, bitches.
Since the closure of the Alcázar pooped on our daytrip, we headed over to the cathedral, visible over the brown title roofs of the buildings. As the rain incessantly poured down on us, we walked through the winding large cobblestoned streets (the stones themselves were large, while the streets were quite narrow) in the general direction of the cathedral. Apparently the Church doesn’t believe in special rights for malnourished college students, who can only afford to eat high-sodium ramen every for their meals because they can buy them for cheapcheapcheap at Winco or Food-4-Less, because the Catedral de Santa María de Toledo did not have a student discount. Bawlzzz. Some of us decided to go for it anyways, because the cathedral is one of the most beautiful in the world and certainly one of the most beautiful in the peninsula. While the other group decided to check out a Knights of the Templars exhibit elsewhere and head back to Madrid early because of the shittyshitty weather, Amy, Jade, Lauren, and I decided to stay to visit the cathedral. We shelled out the 7€ for the entrance fee and we all got Jade an audioguide, which we had planned to share. I ended up going back out to get myself one to share with Lauren, because the guide was so detailed that it took over an hour to do. Mind you, the guide only covered a small part of what could and deserved to be said about the cathedral.
I can’t describe to you how wonderfully beautiful and large the cathedral was. According to the large, booming voice of the bilingual God that echoed through the entire cathedral, photos were not allowed in the holy space. This didn’t stop Lauren from taking a few photos before we actually found out about this rule/heard Him. Does a sin count as a sin if you didn’t know it was one before the act? In the space, the large groups of Asian tourists and Germans with bright orange kerchiefs tied around their necks that were standing far away suddenly seemed like colonies of ants, because the enormity of the space dwarfed them like so in comparison. Can you imagine the vaults of the naves reaching upupup 44.5 meters or 146 ft? That’s like looking at 14 floors of ceilinged empty space. The French gothic architects meant to inspire the feeling of God through such magnificence, and I can definitely see how an entire town’s population would be persuaded so. Now, the only big thing that provokes awe (and a lot of commercial-tourism) is the size of our Mall of America. But the amusement park/multiple food courts-containing monstrosity is definitely at a lower and sadder level than Toledo’s cathedral that took 260ish years in the making. Imagine orange cones and doubled traffic fines lasting for more than the lifespan of the United States thus far! The neighbors must have been pissed.
Oh man, I could go on and on and on about the cathedral. We spent two and a half hours in it. How could you not? When it was like a forty churches plus one museum plus one art museum combo on crack? The main altar and choir were magnificent, but there were also countless chapels lining the circumference of the chapel, each with its unique design and architecture. The cathedral’s art gallery stunned me. All the art was jammed so close together on the walls that I was sure they were replicas and not the originals. There’s no way an original Rafael would be right next to an original Titian. Some of them were so close that their frames even overlapped. O.O The painted neck-cramp-inducing ceiling of the gallery was amazing. Yay for my first amazingly painted ceiling in real-life! Looking at it in its glory was a lot different than poring over those little images it my Gardner art history textbook. To my surprise, the audioguide informed me the works in the gallery, unless otherwise indicated, were all originals. I couldn’t believe it. It made me so happy to see one of my favorite paintings of John the Baptist by Caravaggio there.
And can we talk about the Church’s serious bling? It could admittedly make any gangsta pretty jealous. Screw costume jewelry from El Rastro, I want an archbishop ring inset with a ruby the size of my fist! So kissable. Wouldn’t you want to pay your respects by kissing my giant-ass ring? Thought so.
The audioguide, with its eighteen different points around the cathedral and grand organ track and tinkling bells in the background, was great. Who knew there were so many descriptor words to be used in a church. It was usually good at keeping me on track, but there were times when I had no idea where I was supposed to be and what I was supposed to be looking at. I was especially frustrated when I couldn’t find the Chapel of the Descent, because it’s the main chapel that honors the time when the Virgin herself descended to the spot where the cathedral stands now in 600 CE for a brief cup of tea. I found it quite curious that instead of paying to light candles to say prayers, worshippers paid to light small light bulbs. Smokey wins.
After spending long moments of self-reflection, as instructed by the audioguides, we walked out of the swinging doors of the cathedral into blazing sun. With the storm clouds receded, it was amazing how many people were strolling on the streets. We politely asked a family to take our picture in front of the cathedral. The mom was struggling so the middle-school-aged daughter did it for us with her mother’s assurance. After she took our photo, we offered to take their picture. This confused them at first and made things quite awkward, because they thought we were being creepers and wanted a picture of the family. So not the case. Jaja. We had to explain that we meant with their camera. When we looked at the photo later, we found that the girl, who was supposedly great… err, at least more adept to photo-taking, took a photo of our entire bodies plus the ground and just a tiny sliver of the cathedral in the background. Marvelous photography right here everybody. Get your senior pictures with her now early in the summer to get the best prices! You can purchase her calendar of great portraits in hard-to-tell historic sights at the front desk.
We had planned to visit a monastery, a synagogue, and a mosque before heading back to Madrid, but we just ended up admiring those places of worship from the outside. I already had an extreme dosage of religion at the cathedral; everything seemed so small and less awesome. I felt desensitized to religious places that wouldn’t be able to measure up.
Now let’s talk about modern comfort. There were long flights of escalators running from outside of the old city’s wall to the tourist informational center at the top of the hill. The escalators were such a comfortable and convenient way of hiking that impossible climb that would most likely kill a vehicle-less, eight-chinned Witch of the Waste. But the modern comfort cuts into scenery. Would Minas Tirith be as beautiful if there were escalators climbing up past the walls and up the hill? Thought not.
On our way back to Madrid, Lauren and I drew out Family Circus-style diagrams of the food that we disliked to see who was a pickier eater. Lauren won, because she didn’t like seafood, eggs, ham, and bread, when at least one of them is in every Spanish meal! Good thing we had a healthy dinner of peanut butter and nutella sandwiches that night as we watched the U.S. vs. U.K. game in Jade’s apartment. No ham here, whatsoever. We discovered that eating a combo of nutella and peanut butter on warm toast tasted like mouthfuls of warm Reese’s peanut butter cups.
After the game, I realized just how much I had forgotten my love for a movie about all the things that could go wrong with a city bus that has to maintain a speed of 50 mph or higher. Yes, that’s right. Speed with Spanish audio dubs! Even though Sandra Bullock’s squeaky voice actress was annoying as fuck, the movie was still great. I really do love ridiculous late 80’s/90’s action flicks that I’ve only seen on be-kind-please-rewind VHSes. It might be time to break out the Die Hards again. Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker.
Photo credits: Amy Norrod, Fundación Argentina
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