Toledo, Cordoba, Sevilla … oh my! Still not warm enough.
I am starting to summarize Spain in fewer words so I can finally catch up to where I am now, Bern, Switzerland. After we finished exploring Madrid, we hiked out on the train system for a day trip to Toledo. What a picturesque town, barely any of my photos of the approach of the town turned out - we literally entered the town after approaching on a bridge with striking views.
Best picture of looking to the left of the bridge as we approached:
The entrance:
Toledo’s specialty, aside from some unique cuts of meat, is marzipan, a type of almond sugar mixture that is vegan! So we managed to track down some non dairy desserts to try. But for lunch, we picked up some strawberries, bananas, pumpkin seeds and pistachios.
One of my favourite pictures of my entire trip, a sudden flash of light in the gray:
We ate our lunch in the park to the strange sounds of 80s music blaring from a speaker nearby:
A view of the more modern part of Toledo:
Toledo (or at least the older, touristy sector) is composed of many narrow, winding streets. As you walk, at times it seems like no cars exist. Until one decides to drive through, and then you can see how difficult it is for pedestrians to press up against the sides of buildings to let them through. While I found Toledo equal parts lovely and interesting, the strong tourist culture and many cars made the city that much more uncomfortable to visit.
Here you can see how much of a tight squeeze it was:
Cordoba:
Cordoba was a sudden ray of sunshine on our thus far chilly trip. For the first afternoon that we were there, of course. It reminded me of Florida somehow with its palm trees and wide commercial boulevards. But the star of Cordoba is undoubtably La Mezquita, the Roman Catholic Cathedral and former Muslim mosque. If you ask me, its magnificence comes from its identity as the second largest mosque in the world, but Katie and I laughed as we read the very biased brochure emphasizing its Catholic nature. The lighting was unfortunate for any good pictures, and I have also learned that the more beautiful/amazing/interesting something is on my trip, the more impossible it will be to take the right picture.
The fountain outside with these children who were entranced by it:
The famous arches:
Sevilla:
Sevilla has been nicknamed the ‘frying pan of Spain’ since it is supposed to be the hottest point. Of course with Katie and I’s Canadian winter curse (we brought the cold with us wherever we went, it seemed) and the effects of climate change, it was not too hot when we were there.
In Sevilla we visited yet another cathedral in our multitude of cathedrals, big and small. As you can tell, at this point I am a little tired of cathedrals (and many in Spain were very similar, causing them to blend together indistinguishably) … I am hoping this cathedral exhaustion will be gone by the time I get to Italy!
The most notable part was our thirty-something flight hike up to the bell tower, where we saw some amazing views of Sevilla:
Something about vegetarian/ecological restaurants really makes me happy. I think just the fact that they exist, doing their best to serve ecological, healthy and nourishing food, means that the people running these establishments are usually a joy to meet. In Sevilla we found one of these restaurants that feels kind of like a light in the darkness, I feel a strong connection to these places. Inside, we found a really sweet man who spoke no English but through the power of gestures we were able to understand what to order, and randomnly choose foreign entrees in Spanish, hoping for something delicious. This is where food on our trip gets much cheaper - here for lunch we had an appetizer, main meal, and dessert for about 10 euros. And since they were celebrating their anniversary, free wine!
Above, Katie has a cold soup that was green with we think cucumber, and I had a warm vegetable soup with large croutons. My main dish below was a plate of grilled vegetables, very delicious:
Katie had an eggplant curry on a bed of aromatic rice with full spices mixed in:
What was funny in Spain is that I had a fierce craving for pasta all the way through. I bought some rye pasta from an organic store but was unable to prepare it until we had a proper kitchen - which became the running joke, since I was lugging this pasta with me through all of Spain. So finally in Sevilla our hostel was equipped with a rather snazzy kitchen so I was able to enjoy the delicious pasta with a store bought spaghetti sauce (that tasted oddly like chef boyardee sauce, without the meat).
Arguably the best part of our trip to Sevilla was seeing traditional flamenco dancing. In our guidebook we read that Sevilla was the place to see flamenco, where it is as its cheapest and most authentic. Of course, no pictures until the end, and rather blurry ones at that. We took our place among about 30 people in a small, intimate space. The sounds of Spanish guitar and two dances, one by a female dancer (urged on by her seeming ‘challenger’ in black) and the other by a male dancer. It was so fascinating, especially the social dynamics in the dance - the issuse of gender and relationships between the ‘challenger’-dancer and dancer-audience, as the sounds of clapping and tapping filled the air in the flurry of movement. At the end of the dance, here the dancers show off for the cameras.
That is so cool, we will have to talk about it when I get home since I wrote a whole extensive journal entry about all of the details between the men and women and such… what a coincidence. (sorry, in this internet cafe the exlamation mark seems to be dysfunctional, so I am unable to sound peppy)
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