Totally Toledo

My next Spanish adventure brought me to the old capital of Spain, Toledo.  The city served as the main capital of Castile (and most of Spain at the time) until about 1516 before it was moved to Madrid.  Of course no morning bus ticket is complete without witnessing a minor skirmish-turned-heated-screaming-battle in line at the station.  A young girl tried to cut in line and the mom and elder Spanish woman had some choice Spanish words for each other.  The fun didn't stop until the bus finally left the station while the mom followed our group saying she was going to call the police.  Officially woken up at this point, my friend Christina and I watched the Spanish country side from the comfort of our bus window seats.  We arrived in this medieval city at the bottom of a mountainside that was exhausting to even look at.  There is a good viewpoint of the city across the river so after quickly trying to navigate through hilly streets that would put San Francisco to shame, we decided to split a cab. And we're glad we did because that trek would have taken hours and we got some great shots of the city!

Ugh. #imatourist

Toledo is known for its beautiful, narrow streets and alleys.  Sometimes it is almost dizzying how narrow some of the streets are, but for the most part they were all really beautiful.  Then of course you have the Cathedral which supposedly has an ornately decorated mosaic of sorts inside but we didn't see any of this because entrance to the church was 7 EUROS!  Say whaaaat?? We politely declined and chose instead to walk the streets and get lost a little.

So despite not paying exorbitant prices to enter a cathedral (which are so rare in Spain to begin with) we still got a good view of the exterior of it.

From here our stomachs guide us to what seemingly looks like a harmless Spanish place to eat.  Or so we thought..

The Fat Bell.  What could possibly go wrong?  Answer: everything.

We were ushered inside by a very polite Spanish hostess and were pleasantly satisfied with ourselves for having chosen such an authentic place to eat at.  Then the waiter came.  Correction, the insanely perturbed hombre with a receding hairline and apparently nothing to look forward to ever.  Now customer service in Spain is not exactly top notch to begin with (ahem non existent), but this guy decided to take that to a whole new level.  While browsing through the menu, Christina had happened to ask, completely in Spanish, what he would recommend as an entree.  After examining her in silence for about 15 seconds, he blurted out one of the dishes that was barely audible then proceeded to glare at us until we ordered.  That was the only word we heard from him the whole time.  After tossing silverware and throwing the pitcher of water on the table, we were only too happy to not have the luxury of his presence anymore.  Unfortunately after the lunch it was necessary to ask where the restroom was and, true to form, his response was a curt point of his finger to a random corner of the place.  He then spun right around and marched off.  All lack of courtesy on the server's part aside, the lunch itself proved to be another test on our lives.  We ordered the paella which is very similar to fried rice but with other meats and seafood inside as well.  This particular paella had lots of different kinds of meats and seafood, but the problem was it had too much of the meats and seafood.  Every bone in that chicken's body must have been poured into this rice because you could not take one bite from it without snagging your tooth on some foul's body part.  After spending nearly 30 minutes trying to separate the bones from our rice (and not choke) I was only all too ready to devour my salmon.  In my haste, I did not realize that yes fish have bones too and took a massive bite right out of the center of it.  It felt a little like sticking a small pine cone in your mouth.  Needless to say, after this ordeal we discovered a new translation for La Campana Gorda, the lunch of death.

"Are those bones??"

"Yes, yes they are."

As if this weren't enough to terrify us of the new city, as we walked out of the restaurant and down the street we began to hear dim music in one of the alleys.  As we investigated the source of this eerie blend of halloween music meets evil flute player, we found it emanating from a closed shop window right next to life-size Freddy Krueger and hunchback statues.  The hunchback was a cross between Igor, the servant helping to create Frankenstein, and that creepy old man who ferries you across a river in the 15th century.  So naturally we took a picture with them.

After this odd turn of events, we headed down to the Synagogue at the end of the city.  Toledo was and is known for having nicely blended Islam, Christianity and Judaism peacefully.  There are relics of each of the religions all around the city which make it fascinating to walk through.  This synagogue had awesome architecture on the inside and a mini art exhibit of Hebrew works of poems and paintings.  Each drawing had a ton of symbols that were a little difficult to understand through the Spanish/Hebrew explanations but most of them were very nice.

We ended up running into friends exploring the city too and had some coffee and walked around.  The city was especially great because besides having great architecture, cathedrals, culture, etc. it's on the side of a valley with a river running through it.  So we were able to take some nice shots of some landscape as well.

AND THEN, OF COURSE, why does anyone go Toledo?  For the swords.  Every other shop has "hand crafted" swords that are fully available for purchase.  The best/scariest thing about this is that it is a popular item for parents to buy their children.  The wood swords are suitable I suppose, but I just don't really see the utility of having your children run around wielding metal swords outside with their friends unsupervised.  However this does not deter me from REALLY WANTING one regardless.  I will have to make a return trip just to buy a sword.

And here are just some more random pictures we decided to take.  Until next time, Toledo.  When I finally buy my sword.

A house/church made out of Toledo's famous Mazapan candy substance. 

Now that's what I call a sweet crib, jajaja.

Who needs a Walking Tour when you've lived here for 5 months??

So I brought myself to taking a free walking tour around the city I've lived in for over 5 months and I could not be happier.  After having my friend Kevin (the Amsterdam grad student *see Paris) come and give raving reviews of the tour he went on while I was at work I thought I'd give it a shot.  After nonchalantly brushing off weird looks for being alone on a walking tour (ain't no thang tourists), I followed Claire, our English guide, around this fabulous city I (and the entire world) call Madrid.

I was aware of a minimal amount of information presented on the tour so I was looking forward to learning much, much more.  We started off in Plaza Mayor where they held bull fights, forums, markets, and most interestingly, public executions.  They built make-shift bleachers for thousands of spectators to watch these gruesome events.  What I didn't know was that the "Spanish Method" of execution differed from most other types.  What they preferred when ruthlessly murdering those who did not fit in *cough* those of Jewish and Muslim religions *cough* was tie them to a chair and knot a rope or cord around their neck that was pulled through a hole in the chair.  From there, they would use a wheel on the back of the chair to constrict the cord around the victim's neck until s/he suffocated.  This was a popular MO for executions during the Spanish Inquisition.  A very interesting fact I learned about this was that only about 2,000 people were killed during the Inquisition.  That may seem like a big number but the Inquisition lasted for 356 years, while the witch burnings in Britain lasted for a fraction of that time and over 30,000 people were killed.

No Pink Panthers, screaming baby peddlers, or shiny glittery wolf devils. 

It's like a whole different world before 9pm.

Interesting story about this statue..

So I think this statue is of Felipe III, and it was built hundreds of years ago (go figure).  However since about 10 years after it was constructed the townspeople of Madrid started to notice a horrible smell emanating from the statue.  Anywhere within 20 ft of this bad boy, and you would start to smell all kinds of nasty.  After a while, people just got used to it and eventually stories and legends sprang up about the origins of the odor.  Evil spirits inhabited the statue, the ghosts from executions past haunted it, etc. etc.  Finally in the early part of the TWENTIETH CENTURY (as in less than 100 years ago) they decided to restore this bad boy and as they started to disassemble the statue's interior they found HUNDREDS of dead pigeons!  Apparently what had happened was the pigeons would climb into Felipe's mouth into the stomach of the horse and not be able to fly out again.  So all these pigeons for hundreds of years rotted and decomposed inside the statue, thus creating a most displeasing odor for the city of Madrid.  So, naturally, during the restoration of the statue the city decided to close the mouth of the revered king to prevent pesky birds from going inside.

From here we visited a famous bar/restaurant where Spain's own Robin Hood frequented and kept his booty.  However, as my clever tour guide revealed, instead of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor he actually stole from the rich and gave to the whores.  He was a ladies man you see and stayed that way until he was finally caught and sentenced to death in.... Plaza Mayor!

Then we walked past where Alfonso XIII was nearly assassinated in 1906 right on Calle Mayor.  You can see the memorial to the event and the balcony where the assassin threw his explosive, killing several and wounding hundreds of civilians below.

They leave the palm branch there as a memorial to the event as well. 

Next we made our way to the Cathedral where there is still part of the Moorish wall built over 1,000 years ago to protect the city against invaders while it was governed by the Muslim Moors.  During the Reconquista (Reconquest of Madrid by the Christians) Christian forces gathered outside the city walls trying to decide their plan of attack on the city.  The Moorish walls were very tall and highly guarded making it nearly impossible to cross.  As legend goes, one intrepid 14 year old boy, who was eager to join the battle, volunteered himself to climb the wall first to assemble a harness for the soldiers.  The boy was known as Gato (Cat) around the town for demonstrating agile acrobatic tricks around town for money.  The king outright rejected his offer because the boy was too young too fight.  However the soldiers eventually grew fond of the boy and he was sent to the king again to discuss plans to cross the walls.  While some of the army created a diversion at the main gate of the city, Gato quickly climbed a less guarded section of the wall gripping the stones with his nimble fingers.  Once on top he secured a rope for the rest of the soldier to climb up and the Christian army was able to rapidly climb up and overtake the city.  For this reason, as the legend says, Madrilenos (people from Madrid) are commonly known as "Gatos" because of this young boy.  However if you ask any Madrileno why they are called Gatos you might get a very different answer.  

You can see parts of the old wall just below the Cathedral .

As you can also see in this picture there is a blue star on the ground which was a symbol for Islam, Christianity and Judaism.  During the Moorish Rule all religions were recognized and able to be practiced freely, however once the Christian kings came in, other religions were quickly repressed.

After this we headed off to popular destinations such as the Palace, Opera, Puerta del Sol, Plaza de Santa Ana and where Miguel Cervantes (author of Don Quixote) used to live.  These didn't come with as much history just fun things to look at.  One interesting fact though is that during battle apparently Miguel Cervantes had his arm cut off and he came back to Madrid to write all his novels with only one arm. The last picture here will be a statue of him and there is discrepancy as to whether he is shown with two arms or one.  I will let you be the judge.

Opera at far right.

Statue with Palace in the background.

Plaza de Santa Ana

I think I see a left hand..