Santo Toledo

This weekend I went to Toledo for art class. I hardly enjoyed it, but that was my fault. Toledo está in a far more beautiful part of the country than is Seville; however, the steep-isimo hills that the city is built on do begin to weigh down on the feet after a while. I was also quite, quite tired, having only slept 4 hours and then having ridden the bus for 5 or 6 without being able to catch z's despite trying my darndest to do so. Of course, being sleepy doesn't change the fact that Toledo is beautiful, only my abilities to care that it's beautiful. There I was, standing next to Don Quixote windmills in La Mancha, or walking around a monastic cloister, or standing in a Gothic cathedral looking at a painting by El Greco, recognizing that it is wondrous and ancient and beautiful and still being totally unable to pay attention because mentally, all I was interested in was some rest.

In fact, this picture is an excellent illustration of all I was interested in doing in Toledo. The other outstanding citizen in the photo is Kelsey.

I was also exceedingly interested in crying, as lately, I've been missing a little bit of me time. Privacy is hard won in Spain. It's not that people are constantly asking about your personal life...they don't...at all. It's that it's hard to find time to be alone. And after not having time to be alone and collect and process, well, one begins to feel...alone. Like you are surrounded with people, totally unaware of who you are and keenly aware that they haven't an idea of who you are either.

I don't know, perhaps that was pure gibberish. Made sense to me.

Then I talked to Tyler on Skype and I felt better.

Quite possibly, my favorite part of Toledo was Pepe (seen here). I love the dogs here in Spain. Many of them appear quite vacant, but all appear ernest and spunky. Pepe was no exception: entirely vacant, entirely spunky, entirely Pepe. Although, in truth, his name is not actually Pepe (unless the goddess of coincidence is smiling upon me).

Pepe appears to spend most of his day at a bar in Toledo, eating scraps off the floor around half-smoked cigarettes while his owner pours a pint from behind the counter and some curmudgeonly old bachelor complains about politics. Yes, this dog is a regular at a bar.

Welcome to Spain.

I saw Pepe inside the bar, and when his owner saw me eyeing his pet, he pointed at me, said something to the dog, and Pepe obliged, calmy strolling outside and standing in front of me so that I could scratch his ears.

He did not remember me the next day as he calmly weaved around tourists during what I'm sure was his daily constitutional. He was not to be bothered.

Anyway. The point is, Pepe made me happy.

What does not make me happy is this scraggly, adorable, snaggle-toothed, possibly-homeless dog that sits outside the apartment complex every day apparently with the sole purpose of making Ellen and I feel broken-hearted.

Hmmm. Perhaps instead I ought to think about how José María sounds when he says McBeth. It's comparable to "quack, quack" and as I love ducks, that's fine with me.

In closing, here is a video, courtesy of Ellen, of Carmen telling us about something in the cathedral. Spanish is so commonplace to me now that I am surprised when people don't understand it (speaking it is very different, of course) . Then again, Carmen speaks pretty clearly for us, whereas María tends to drop the second halves of words all over the place. Apparently Sevillan Spanish is one of the hardest to understand.

I had my own video, complete with examples of everything Carmen was discussing or explaining, but apparently I don't understand the camera I'm using here and ended up taking a picture of Kelsey's legs. Whoops.

Nevermind. I can't get it to work. Some other time perhaps.

I hope everyone is doing well over there in the New World.

And yes, Columbus Day does merit a day off here.

Fin.