Sunday, May 14, 2006
Report from Toledo (not Ohio)
Everyone says that Guanajuato is just like Toledo, which is why I included it in my itinerary. I don't regret the choice, but I disagree with the characterization. Sure, Toledo is full of little streets going every which way, but it is much more claustrophobic than Guanajuato, its buildings being four or five stories high above those narrow streets instead of two or three, and it's much less colorful, with almost everything being some shade of brown instead of the riot of color that characterizes Guanajuato. And of course it's a medieval city with a pronounced Muslim influence.
I've always said that I have no sense of direction and in recent years no memory but that I get by when traveling by not being shy about asking directions. Here the problem with asking directions is that that passer-by is probably another tourist; I find myself going into stores to be sure that I'm talking to a native. The maze is so bewildering that I generally ask several times between my starting point and my destination, especially since someone is likely to say "Todo recto" (straight ahead) when the street later on forks in two directions.
They call Toledo the city of three cultures (Jewish, Muslim, and Christian), but it´s very clear which culture won out, with a mosque called Mesquita del Cristo de la Luz and a synagogue named Sinagoga Santa María la Blanca. Such places became churches, despite not having the usual shape, after Moslems and Jews were expelled, until some point when apparently for the sake of the tourism that is clearly the city's main economic activity they were restored and become museums.
The main plaza here, called the Zocodover, has an irregular shape, low stone walls that become benches with wrought iron at the back on three sides, buildings with cafés in front on two (a McDonald´s in one of them), trees, two newstands, not especially attractive, especially after the magnificent plazas in Madrid and Salamanca.
The day after my arrival (the day of my arrival having been devoted to finding the main plaza and the supermarket) I check out a tour that is not happening as scheduled, visit a mosque near my hotel that jams an impressive number of columns and arches into a very small space, and then run into a train on wheels (no track necessary) in the Zocodover and decide to take its tour in hopes of getting better oriented. For logistical reasons, it turns out that its route is mostly on the edges of the city, from where one can see what´s really attractive about Toledo--the ancient stone walls, high arching stone gates (one with two green-tiled towers), castles, bridges, country estates called cigarrales, the panorama with the Cathedral and the Alcázar predominating.
In the afternoon I have a small adventure for a practical purpose. One of my preparations for this trip was to order a pants suit from Magellan´s, which turns out to be wonderfully comfortable, of a silky-soft synthetic fabric, a light brownish-grayish color, with a label that insists it be professionally dry cleaned. At first I am worried that it will get dirty on the flight over, but for two weeks I am lucky. Then I note a small stain on the lapel, which Wash ´n´Dry, my travel remedy, fails to get out, so the only thing to do is ask at the desk about a tintorería. Unfortunately, it turns out, the dry cleaner´s two blocks away is closed for renovation and the alternative is to venture into the new part of the city. The man at the desk whips out the map the hotel stocks and traces the route, assuring me it will be a pleasant 10- to 15-minute walk.
After initial fears that I will never find it, I decide this will be my excursion for the afternoon, and I set out just before 5, when stores reopen after the midday meal break. My first landmark is the Plaza de la Estrella, which I had acquired the impression was downhill from the hotel but turns out to be uphill. (Yes, Toledo is like Guanajuato in being hilly.) It takes me four or five attempts, walking down, asking, walking up again, almost giving up. Once having found the Plaza de la Estrella the rest is much easier, and I am soon on a wide boulevard surrounded by everything the old city is not--wide sidewalks, streets in a grid, new buildings, and a sense of spaciousness. I find the tintorería 40 minutes after I set out, dismayed that I will have to do without my beloved suit until Saturday.
The following day I plunge into the maze and the tourist attractions (operating on my own because the tourism folks don't give tours and the commercial ones are very expensive), starting with the Cathedral. Unlike Salamanca's Cathedral, whose exterior is more impressive than its interior, here the outside (Gothic) strikes me as ugly but the inside is overwhelming. My favorite part is the coro (choir stalls), where the intricacy of the carving (wood below, stone above) is extraordinary, as are the organs. The main altarpiece (Flemish Gothic) is stunning, as are the stained-glass windows, especially the rose window. The sacristy is a museum, a combination of art gallery and museum of religious artifacts, including what must be the most massive and intricate gold-and-silver monstrance ever made.
Toledo was the city of El Greco, and seeing his luminescent elongated subjects takes you beyond the Museo de El Greco (where I found myself miffed by his placing the Alcázar on a cloud at the bottom of his view and map of Toledo). You can see 18 of his paintings in the sacristy of the Cathedral and several more in the Museo de Santa Cruz. His most impressive work is in the Iglesia de Santo Tomé, a church that has made itself into a one-painting museum. It´s an enormous work depicting the burial of the Count of Orgaz, a 14th-century beneficiary of the Church at whose burial St. Augustine and St. Stephen are said to have descended from heaven to place the count in his tomb. The opulence of their vestments is breathtaking and its brightness is in great contrast to the ethereal nature of the heavenly scene above.
One of the two remaining synagogues (a church and barracks between 1492 and 1877), with lovely Mudejar decoration, is attached to the Museo Sefardi, explaining and illustrating the lives of Sephardic Jews, which (especially as an ex-New Yorker) leaves me depressed because it treats them as the exotic Other.
The Museo de Santa Cruz is having a temporary exposition of art from convents in Castilla-La Mancha executed during what they call the century of El Quijote (1530-1650). When I go to the permanent exhibition I see a sign about guided tours to the temporary exposition, ask, am told I will have to add myself to a group and that one is scheduled to visit at 1 the next day. What they don't tell me is that the group is composed of 6th graders, who of course aren't capable of being quiet in a museum. I learn about how the different orders of monks wore differently colored and styled habits (reminding me of the different traje típico worn by different groups in Guatemala, according to one theory because the Spanish assigned them) and that members of the gentry financed the monasteries and convents, but I break off and continue to the ceramics exhibit (thinking about the conflict between Dolores Hidalgo and Puebla over which city could call its ceramics Talavera) before the kiddies are finished.
Like Salamanca, Toledo has a Roman bridge, which I go to to photograph and cross in hopes of getting a panoramic view from the other side. Although the Alcázar is prominent, the Cathedral refuses to show itself. (The Alcázar is a fortress--then Muslim--dating from the 10th century converted by Franco into a military museum, now closed for renovation, which is why I haven't talked about visiting it.) Later I ask at the desk of my hotel about where to get a good view to photograph and am told about the Iglesia de los Jesuitas, which has converted its towers into a tourist destination for the view. I go and ascend (being grateful that it's not a spiral staircase, which at that height makes me anxious), take pictures, but stiff feel that's not the kind of view-at-a-distance I was looking for. On Sunday, my last day, I cross the Roman bridge again and go to the right, rather than uphill to the left, theorizing that I'll run into a view of the Cathedral if I walk far enough. I'm wrong because the road (and a well-barricaded sidewalk) veers off to the left, no longer following the river that is the boundry on three sides of the city; I then see people walking on a sidewalk on the city side of the river set into the side of the hill and think that might lead to something interesting, so I cross back and walk on it, but there's nothing to see but the other half of the river, so I decide to consider it all a pleasant walk on a pleasant Sunday morning.
Odds and ends: It turns out there is a terrifying aspect to Toledo--walking down one of its narrowest of narrow no-sidewalk streets with an SUV coming, pointing its side-view mirror at you. It reminds me of my first visit to Taxco (another city without sidewalks), only more so. I would like to get polished the dressier of the two pairs of shoes I brought, shined in the Jardín in Guanajuato just before I left but now showing signs of wear. Evidently the Spanish shine their own shoes or just don't bother--the man in the cybercafé tells me there are muchachos shining shoes on the street in Madrid (I didn't see any) but not in Toledo. Or maybe it's a matter of not showing social inequality on the street. I am thinking I need a better souvenir of my trip to Spain than the two long-sleeved T-shirts (one saying Universidad de Salamanca on the back) I have acquired because the weather in Madrid and Salamanca was cooler than I expected. After inspecting many store windows I part with 25€ for a miniature clock in the shape of a guitar in the gold-and-black style called damasquinado, this to put on my desk so as to know the time when my computer is turned off. I could of course have bought a suit of armor or at least a sword, on display in store windows throughout the tourist part of town.
I am feeling satisfied with my itinerary of one week in each destination, which gives me time to know the place well and not feel I have to dash to get in all the required attractions. I am also very happy with Spanish train travel--it seems to me to be the most comfortable means of travel I have experienced (that excludes ocean liners), and the bathrooms on Spanish trains are first-rate.
Monday of course is travel day and I am off to Valencia, a 35-minute train ride to Madrid followed by a three-and-a-half-hour ride from Madrid to Valencia.
I've always said that I have no sense of direction and in recent years no memory but that I get by when traveling by not being shy about asking directions. Here the problem with asking directions is that that passer-by is probably another tourist; I find myself going into stores to be sure that I'm talking to a native. The maze is so bewildering that I generally ask several times between my starting point and my destination, especially since someone is likely to say "Todo recto" (straight ahead) when the street later on forks in two directions.
They call Toledo the city of three cultures (Jewish, Muslim, and Christian), but it´s very clear which culture won out, with a mosque called Mesquita del Cristo de la Luz and a synagogue named Sinagoga Santa María la Blanca. Such places became churches, despite not having the usual shape, after Moslems and Jews were expelled, until some point when apparently for the sake of the tourism that is clearly the city's main economic activity they were restored and become museums.
The main plaza here, called the Zocodover, has an irregular shape, low stone walls that become benches with wrought iron at the back on three sides, buildings with cafés in front on two (a McDonald´s in one of them), trees, two newstands, not especially attractive, especially after the magnificent plazas in Madrid and Salamanca.
The day after my arrival (the day of my arrival having been devoted to finding the main plaza and the supermarket) I check out a tour that is not happening as scheduled, visit a mosque near my hotel that jams an impressive number of columns and arches into a very small space, and then run into a train on wheels (no track necessary) in the Zocodover and decide to take its tour in hopes of getting better oriented. For logistical reasons, it turns out that its route is mostly on the edges of the city, from where one can see what´s really attractive about Toledo--the ancient stone walls, high arching stone gates (one with two green-tiled towers), castles, bridges, country estates called cigarrales, the panorama with the Cathedral and the Alcázar predominating.
In the afternoon I have a small adventure for a practical purpose. One of my preparations for this trip was to order a pants suit from Magellan´s, which turns out to be wonderfully comfortable, of a silky-soft synthetic fabric, a light brownish-grayish color, with a label that insists it be professionally dry cleaned. At first I am worried that it will get dirty on the flight over, but for two weeks I am lucky. Then I note a small stain on the lapel, which Wash ´n´Dry, my travel remedy, fails to get out, so the only thing to do is ask at the desk about a tintorería. Unfortunately, it turns out, the dry cleaner´s two blocks away is closed for renovation and the alternative is to venture into the new part of the city. The man at the desk whips out the map the hotel stocks and traces the route, assuring me it will be a pleasant 10- to 15-minute walk.
After initial fears that I will never find it, I decide this will be my excursion for the afternoon, and I set out just before 5, when stores reopen after the midday meal break. My first landmark is the Plaza de la Estrella, which I had acquired the impression was downhill from the hotel but turns out to be uphill. (Yes, Toledo is like Guanajuato in being hilly.) It takes me four or five attempts, walking down, asking, walking up again, almost giving up. Once having found the Plaza de la Estrella the rest is much easier, and I am soon on a wide boulevard surrounded by everything the old city is not--wide sidewalks, streets in a grid, new buildings, and a sense of spaciousness. I find the tintorería 40 minutes after I set out, dismayed that I will have to do without my beloved suit until Saturday.
The following day I plunge into the maze and the tourist attractions (operating on my own because the tourism folks don't give tours and the commercial ones are very expensive), starting with the Cathedral. Unlike Salamanca's Cathedral, whose exterior is more impressive than its interior, here the outside (Gothic) strikes me as ugly but the inside is overwhelming. My favorite part is the coro (choir stalls), where the intricacy of the carving (wood below, stone above) is extraordinary, as are the organs. The main altarpiece (Flemish Gothic) is stunning, as are the stained-glass windows, especially the rose window. The sacristy is a museum, a combination of art gallery and museum of religious artifacts, including what must be the most massive and intricate gold-and-silver monstrance ever made.
Toledo was the city of El Greco, and seeing his luminescent elongated subjects takes you beyond the Museo de El Greco (where I found myself miffed by his placing the Alcázar on a cloud at the bottom of his view and map of Toledo). You can see 18 of his paintings in the sacristy of the Cathedral and several more in the Museo de Santa Cruz. His most impressive work is in the Iglesia de Santo Tomé, a church that has made itself into a one-painting museum. It´s an enormous work depicting the burial of the Count of Orgaz, a 14th-century beneficiary of the Church at whose burial St. Augustine and St. Stephen are said to have descended from heaven to place the count in his tomb. The opulence of their vestments is breathtaking and its brightness is in great contrast to the ethereal nature of the heavenly scene above.
One of the two remaining synagogues (a church and barracks between 1492 and 1877), with lovely Mudejar decoration, is attached to the Museo Sefardi, explaining and illustrating the lives of Sephardic Jews, which (especially as an ex-New Yorker) leaves me depressed because it treats them as the exotic Other.
The Museo de Santa Cruz is having a temporary exposition of art from convents in Castilla-La Mancha executed during what they call the century of El Quijote (1530-1650). When I go to the permanent exhibition I see a sign about guided tours to the temporary exposition, ask, am told I will have to add myself to a group and that one is scheduled to visit at 1 the next day. What they don't tell me is that the group is composed of 6th graders, who of course aren't capable of being quiet in a museum. I learn about how the different orders of monks wore differently colored and styled habits (reminding me of the different traje típico worn by different groups in Guatemala, according to one theory because the Spanish assigned them) and that members of the gentry financed the monasteries and convents, but I break off and continue to the ceramics exhibit (thinking about the conflict between Dolores Hidalgo and Puebla over which city could call its ceramics Talavera) before the kiddies are finished.
Like Salamanca, Toledo has a Roman bridge, which I go to to photograph and cross in hopes of getting a panoramic view from the other side. Although the Alcázar is prominent, the Cathedral refuses to show itself. (The Alcázar is a fortress--then Muslim--dating from the 10th century converted by Franco into a military museum, now closed for renovation, which is why I haven't talked about visiting it.) Later I ask at the desk of my hotel about where to get a good view to photograph and am told about the Iglesia de los Jesuitas, which has converted its towers into a tourist destination for the view. I go and ascend (being grateful that it's not a spiral staircase, which at that height makes me anxious), take pictures, but stiff feel that's not the kind of view-at-a-distance I was looking for. On Sunday, my last day, I cross the Roman bridge again and go to the right, rather than uphill to the left, theorizing that I'll run into a view of the Cathedral if I walk far enough. I'm wrong because the road (and a well-barricaded sidewalk) veers off to the left, no longer following the river that is the boundry on three sides of the city; I then see people walking on a sidewalk on the city side of the river set into the side of the hill and think that might lead to something interesting, so I cross back and walk on it, but there's nothing to see but the other half of the river, so I decide to consider it all a pleasant walk on a pleasant Sunday morning.
Odds and ends: It turns out there is a terrifying aspect to Toledo--walking down one of its narrowest of narrow no-sidewalk streets with an SUV coming, pointing its side-view mirror at you. It reminds me of my first visit to Taxco (another city without sidewalks), only more so. I would like to get polished the dressier of the two pairs of shoes I brought, shined in the Jardín in Guanajuato just before I left but now showing signs of wear. Evidently the Spanish shine their own shoes or just don't bother--the man in the cybercafé tells me there are muchachos shining shoes on the street in Madrid (I didn't see any) but not in Toledo. Or maybe it's a matter of not showing social inequality on the street. I am thinking I need a better souvenir of my trip to Spain than the two long-sleeved T-shirts (one saying Universidad de Salamanca on the back) I have acquired because the weather in Madrid and Salamanca was cooler than I expected. After inspecting many store windows I part with 25€ for a miniature clock in the shape of a guitar in the gold-and-black style called damasquinado, this to put on my desk so as to know the time when my computer is turned off. I could of course have bought a suit of armor or at least a sword, on display in store windows throughout the tourist part of town.
I am feeling satisfied with my itinerary of one week in each destination, which gives me time to know the place well and not feel I have to dash to get in all the required attractions. I am also very happy with Spanish train travel--it seems to me to be the most comfortable means of travel I have experienced (that excludes ocean liners), and the bathrooms on Spanish trains are first-rate.
Monday of course is travel day and I am off to Valencia, a 35-minute train ride to Madrid followed by a three-and-a-half-hour ride from Madrid to Valencia.
# posted by Louise Lander @ 10:25 AM 
