Cerado Part 2

Day 54

I was up pretty early after my early night and after packing up and putting my things in the lock up for the day I headed off to Segovia. Different people will tell you that either Toledo or Segovia is the best small medieval city. I wanted to be able make up my mind on my own.

After wandering blindly I found the first big attraction, a Roman Aqueduct from the 1^st century. I think that this is the first time that I have seen something like this. It was really amazing. No mortar was used in the aqueducts construction, rocks were just meticulously placed. I loved it and spent some time just staring at it, amazed at the construction.

According to my guidebook the fairy tale looking Alcazar was opened daily. This wasn´t the case. It was a Monday, and things do often shut on Mondays, but I was taking my books word. I wasn´t bothered so much that I wasn´t going to get to go inside of it. I´ve been to loads of castles, how different could this one possibly be? What bothered me was that because of all the trees in front of it I couldn´t even get a good look at it, let alone a picture.

The biggest frustration was that everything has been closed for the last 5 days. Don´t these people know that it´s a holiday and not a holiweek?

The only thing that was open was the cathedral. Let´s Go had said that the outside was the best part, however the sheer size of the building was interesting. I decided to check it out despite the lackluster review. The outside is amazing, I tried to get several close up pictures of the stone work.

Inside the cathedral had an interesting story. The original cathedral was located across the street from the Alcazar and was destroyed in 1521 during the Communeros war. Instead of repairing they picked a new spot and built an entirely new structure. In order to save on building costs, some parts of the original cathedral were used. This made the interior an odd mix of the old and older. Some of the chapels were pretty interesting and I managed to sneak a few pictures. There was one painting called the tree of life that showed Jesus with a skeleton cutting down a tree. They both appeared to be doing the cutting. On the top of the tree was a big table with loads of people having a party around it. I didn´t quite get it, but it was still interesting.

If the castle had been opened I may not have bothered with the cathedral, but I am glad that I saw it.

When I got back to Madrid I made one more attempt to get the blog up to date, I was getting so close!

Soon I was off, on a night bus to Malaga. I was glad to leave Madrid, I had spent 6 nights there and was ready for a change.

Cerado

Day 53
After a really good nights sleep I woke up not quite knowing where I was. I had a long breakfast with Susan and Alberto. Alberto had been to New York a few years before and we chatted about the city and what he had done while he was there. After breakfast they offered to let me crash at their place one more night. I really appreciated it and would have loved to take them up on the offer, but I had already book and paid for a hostel and felt that I should use that.

I can not thank Susan and Alberto enough. Without their hospitality I would have been up a creek without a paddle. Couchsurfing is a fabulous website and I´m very happy that it was there when I needed it.

Still, after almost of month of mostly homestays and hotels it was time for me to rejoin the world of hostels. In less then ten minutes I went from the girl who was crashing with friends in Madrid, to the girl in room 2, bed 5.

I decided to join the tourist droves and headed off to Toledo. Toledo is a well preserved medieval city, and also where El Grecko painted many of his masterpieces.

After an hours bus ride I followed the long line of tourists up the hill. At the tourist info center they told me that pretty much everything was closed except for the cathedral. That was fine with me because that is what I had come to see.

The cathedral was pricey at 7 euros, but I paid it anyway. I also sucked that I wasn´t allowed to take pictures in the cathedral, there were guards around telling people to stop the second they would pull out a camera. It was also irritating to find that none of the explanations were in English. I was lost without my translator. I decided that I should pay the euro for a 10 minute description of the place. It was basically worthless, all they did was say the names of the different chapels and when they were made and how big they were. Boring.

There was a small museum attached to the cathedral. There were several stunning El Grecko paintings, one was of Jesus as he was being captured. He looked as if he was praying. According to the guide I overheard, El Grecko wanted to paint Jesus in a more human light. There was a small VanDyck painting hanging nearby, I found that to be a bit odd.

One of the rooms was filed with pope hats, I don´t know what they were actually called. Another room displayed religious robes. There were some relics, but most of them were too far behind the velvet rope for me to be able to read who they had belonged to. There was one small room with paintings of every bishop of Toledo, the last 400 years were individual portraits. The last 6 bishops all wore glasses.

As I couldn´t read anything and I couldn´t take pictures and there wasn´t really anything else to check out in town I passed some time drawing stick figure versions of some of the paintings. I would love to show these to you, but they didn´t really photograph well.

The alter was pretty interesting. I spent some time trying to make it a stick figure masterpiece, but there was too much going on and I couldn´t fit it all on the page.

Right at the cathedrals exit there was a food fair. I grabbed some yummy cider and sampled loads of hams, cheeses and jellys.

I spent some time just wandering around the old streets before I decided to head back. I spent some time on the Internet before grabbing a quick dinner and heading back to my hostel. The hostel didn´t have a common room and there wasn´t really anyone around so I simply called it a night.

Couchsurf

Day 52
Al had to be up early for his flight and I was up with him. It was hard to say goodbye again. We had had such a great time traveling together. I was very sorry to see him leave. I could have spent most of the day in our fancy hotel room, but I just didn’t want to be there alone and got my act together as quickly as I could and left.

I mentioned a few days ago that I was having difficulties finding a reasonably priced place to stay. I didn´t know about the holiday until to late and everything was booked. I decided to turn to couchsurfing in hopes that someone would take me in. Couchsurfing is a web site that connects people who are willing to meet travelers for a drink, give them a tour, or even let them sleep on their couch. Susan and her boyfriend Alberto were kind enough to let me sleep on their couch for the night. I was a bit nervous as this was my first time couchsurfing, but both of them were wonderful. They gave me their living room with a pull out bed for the evening.

Susan gave me a nice tour of Madrid, taking me to the main squares and fountains. We even spent some time in the Retrio park. We had tried to go to the Renia Sofia museum, but the line was beyond long and we decided to ditch the idea.

After another Internet session (i´m getting close to catching up) I headed back to the apartment for a rest. Susan told me that they were going out to dinner and invited me to join them. A friend of theirs, Sergio, also joined us. We ate at a locals place, and shared everything we had. It turned out that Sergio was also on couchsurfing, but Susan had not known that. We had quite a lot of fun talking about cultural differences and languages. Everyone spoke good English and didn´t mind translating for me when I didn´t understand.

Dinner was followed by a couple of drinks at a nearby bar. I was very tired from the sun and waking up early. When we got back to Susan and Roberto´s apartment I fell asleep quickly.

Al´s Last Day

Day 51
We were both exhausted after the bus ride, but Al was faring a bit worse than me. I guess that I am getting used to the things. Despite the confusion of exhaustion and my water bottle springing a leak we managed to get to our hotel near the airport. Right away we turned around and went back to Madrid.

Al had wanted to get some souvenirs and gifts and I needed a memory stick for my photos. We stumbled upon a different festival. Apparently this was the bicentennial for the end of France’s occupation of Madrid. The crowds were terrible and once again, nothing was open.

I managed to get my memory stick, but little else was accomplished. We ended up just heading back the 1.5 hours to the hotel (the next day I found that it was really on 35 minutes from Madrid). There was nothing near our hotel, not a supermarket, or a restaurant or anything. This forced us to have a rather expensive dinner at the hotel.

We spent the rest of the evening watching MTV reality shows (that was all there was in English) and packing our bags. Al was nice enough to take back a handful of things for me to lighten my load.

After an uneventful last day we both fell asleep, not wanting the morning to come when we would need to say goodbye.

Not my kind of tour

Day 39
We had meant to be up early for a bike tour of Madrid, but it was raining, and Al was still jet lagged so we decided to skip the tour and sleep more. When we finally did get going we headed straight to the Prado, the museum in Madrid.

There were so many amazing works are art here its hard to just pick a few to write about. We spent about 5 hours in the museum. Not many of the descriptions were in English and it was nice to have Al there to translate for me. There was a table by Bosch about the seven deadly sins. We couldn´t seem to remember them all at the time and tried to guess what was what on the table. We think we got most of them, but not all. The Garden of Earthy Delights, also by Bosch, was far more stunning in person than it had looked on Rick Steves. A Zurbaran, called Apparition of the Apostle St. Peter to St. Peter Nolasco, played with angles and was a bit uncomfortable to look at because of the odd setting. There were loads of Goyas and a few El Grecko´s. My favorite, and a painting that I had wanted to see for some time, was Meninas by Velazques, was far more stunning than I could have ever imagined.

We were disappointed to see that it was still raining when we left the museum. Instead of wandering the gardens near the Prado we simply picked up some food and Al made us dinner at the hostel.

Early on in the day we had decided to take part in a pub crawl. Al had never done anything like this before and they promised that this was the cheapest way to have a night out in Madrid. On the way to the first bar (we hadn´t paid yet) our guide made a phone call and then some guy met him on the corner and handed him tickets. Al started to feel like the whole thing was shady and I agreed. At the first bar we decided that the loud American music bar was not our scene so we ditched while the guide wasn´t looking.

We ended up at a place around the corner that was much more quiet and played Spanish music. We split a pitcher of sangria and some tapas. Our total bill was a few euros less than the tour would have been and we had a more Spanish experience.

All that and a bag of trail mix

Day 38
I was a little tired in the morning, maybe I was out later than I had thought. Still, I got myself up and moved one block over to a new hostel. I didn´t book places so close on purpose, just got lucky.

I was excited, a friend was meeting me, and I was early, of course. I tried to wait out by the metro station, but after about 45 minutes I had already checked out all of the stores and it was too cold to sit outside. I headed back to the hostel and sat at reception (I wasn´t able to check in yet) watching ANTM on my Ipod.

Then Al, with his big red bag and more stuff than he really needed walked in. In seconds I jumped up to give him a hug, I didn´t even let him get his pack off. Soon we were checked in and had set out to explore Madrid and to keep moving to keep Al awake.

The first place I took him to was Plaza Mayor. I wanted him to go somewhere where he would feel like he was in Europe, and I thought that this place, close to our hostel, would be it. We had lunch overlooking the square and then headed to the Royal Palace.

The palace was much like the others I have seen, loud and ornate. Still, I loved it. I don´t know what it is about palaces and castles, I just can´t get enough of them. The rooms had been refurbished to look like they had in the 1830´s. Everything was quite grand. The throne room had some pretty spectacular lion statues. The dinning room table had more place settings than people that I know.

After and hours break we set out to visit the St. Isidro Cathedral to see his body, but we couldn´t find it. This was mostly because I had forgotten the name of where we were going. We had to go all the way back to the hostel to look it up. When we did find it, we ended up at the museum of St. Isidro, not the cathedral. Apparently that was somewhere else, far away. The museum was free so we checked it out. Most of it was about Madrid and the history of the small area that the museum was set on. There was a really interesting section on paintings that are in the Prado. It told you how to pick out what type of a person it is a picture of by studying the clothing.

We may have gone through the museum backwards because it wasn´t until we go to the end that we learned anything about St. Isidro. It turns out that while he was away one day his wife dropped their baby in the well. Instead of trying to get the baby out they decided to pray. God answered their prayers and the water rose up with the baby safely on top. One of the highlights of the museum was seeing the well itself. I guess if I can´t have a mummy that a well will do.

It was getting late and Al was pretty jet lagged. We stopped by the Lidl to pick up some food for dinner to eat in our room, even though this was against hostel rules. We are such rebels. When we got back to the room Al showed me all of the cool travel sized and convertible things that he had brought with him. Also in his pack was about 10 pounds of trail mix. I can always count on Al to be over prepared.

Cornerstone

Day 37


When I woke up I realized that the electricity had gone out at some point during the night. I used this as an excuse in getting my act together very slowly. I needed to do this anyway, there wasn´t much light, even with the window open and I didn´t want to forget anything.

I had two things left to accomplish before leaving for Madrid. I returned to the Old and New Cathedrals to climb the tower the connected both of them, but was mainly part of the Old Cathedral. It was pretty cool to be able to climb up through the rafters of the cathedrals. Most of the time when you climb a church it is just straight up, step after step. This one had different levels and lead me through chambers of the cathedral at various heights. I got the chance to view Salamanca from every angle, each was more stunning than the next.

The other cool thing is that you got to walk across the top of the New Cathedral. This gave me an up close and personal view of the paintings on the ceilings. They were much better than they had looked the day before.



One of the rooms that I spent some time in was called the cornerstone room. It was basically the room that supported the weight of the Old Cathedral. Over the years the caretakers of the cathedral have lived here. It was easy to see damage from both the Lisbon earthquake in the 1700´s, as well as some fire damage. For some reason this room seemed more special to me than all of the ornately decorated chapels. I spent some time just staring at the walls and taking it all in.



I also spent some time checking out the Roman bridge. It wasn´t as impressive as everyone had said it was, but it was still interesting.



Someone had told me that the ride to Madrid was only about 2 hours, even if you took the cheap, slow bus as I was doing. This was why I didn´t watch the time very closely for when I would leave. The bus took more like 4.5 hours and I got to Madrid just as it was getting dark.
After some time on the Internet I ended up hanging out with some Brazilians and an American at the hostel bar before heading off to sleep. I had a early day that I wanted to be sure to be up for.