Expediccionado: Super Sabbath

Yeah, I know I haven't been real timely about getting a blog up this week. Last weekend we went to Toledo, a three-hour drive from Úbeda, and basically had a great big church day. We visited a mosque, a cathedral, two synagogues, and a monastery. By the end we were thoroughly exhausted and it was all started to look the same - forgive me for any irreverence.

Here are a couple shots of Toledo. When I took these we were on top of the old wall that surrounds the historical part of the city.

Here's the tiny mosque we visited. It was, of course, eventually turned into a Catholic church like most of the mosques in Spain. And, as usual, they neglected to remove the inscriptions from the Koran off the front of the building, perhaps hoping people would just think it was a cool design.

Here's the only shot I could get of the inside of the mosque because it was closed for excavation.

Here's why they were excavating!

Behind the mosque the ground was being excavated and revealed several graves. You could distinguish between the Muslim and Christian tombs because of their shape and the fact that some of them were pointed towards Mecca.

Toledo is in La Mancha, where Don Quixote took place, so there are all kinds of Don Quixote figurines in the tourist shops. Here I am trying to look as noble as the knight errant at my side, but I came out looking little more than indifferent, perhaps even slightly annoyed.

Now that's a narrow street! When we came out the other end there were just a few inches on either side of us. I made the comment that, according to current statistics on obesity, a good percentage of the population of the United States couldn't even fit down that street.

Then we went to the cathedral. Here's a shot of the main tower that you could see from pretty much everywhere in the city.

Here's the entrance to the shamefully enormous thing. Above the door there is a scene of the Last Supper with statues of Christ and the Apostles. You can only really see their heads from here.

The main altar from far to near.

The seats for the choir. Each one was completely different, some containing very pagan or downright naughty images (if you have enough money not even the Inquisition can touch you.) Most of them had scenes from Spanish history carved into them. It took the guy who made them 35 years to finish the job.

There were very impressive ceilings throughout...

...but the most impressive thing about the place was that it contained an art gallery of very important works by big names such as El Greco and other Spanish and Italian artists.

The walls of the sacristy were lined with paintings of all the cardinals. Over the entrance was this giant painting of Judgment Day. We all agreed that the people on the bottom right (in hell) looked like they were having a lot more fun than everyone else in the painting.

Then there was this giant gold thing where they used to store the host and wine that are used for communion. After I saw this, combined with the robes of the priests and cardinals woven with gold and diamonds, I sarcastically asked what ever became of Humility as one of the holy virtues. David replied that it was absolutely shameless considering how many poor people there were. He was particularly offended by their lack of kindness because they didn't give any sort of discount on the entry price for students. According to him: "The Catholic church should be less Catholic and more Christian."

And of course there was no shortage of important dead guys laying around everywhere.

After lunch we ventured into the Jewish district of Toledo to check out a couple old synagogues. These images are from one that was also converted into a church, except in this case they actually took the trouble to destroy the Hebrew writing on the walls. Nowadays it is a Sephardi museum.