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Published: July 12th 2008
Royal Castle Toledo
taken from our lunch spot - as you can see we weren't the only tour bus there!Back in Madrid - our five day tour of Spain over - having been on the road for quite a few hours traveling from place to place we have overtaken many truck drivers. Sitting in the coach we were at the same level as the driver's cabs - noticing that most of them are in the cabins on their own made me ponder on the 'loneliness of the long distance driver'. All day, most days - not a job I envy!
But I'm getting ahead of myself - before we arrived in Madrid we spent a few hours on a guided walking tour of Toledo - visiting the Royal Palace and garden, Gothic cathedral, Alcazar Fortress and the Jewish synagogue. Toledo was originally the capital of Spain.
We are now in the air flying from Madrid to Geneva in Switzerland and from now on we'll be traveling by train until we have to fly from Rome to Hong Kong. Our last day in Madrid was spent walking around and discovering some more of the city - the main areas we investigated were the Cathedral and the 'Palacio Real de Madrid', the main courtyard of which faces the cathedral. Both are huge
Toldeo Cathedral spire
- interesting I thought! edifices and while we didn't go inside the cathedral we did buy tickets to look around the royal apartments, pharmacy and the armory which contains everything a good knight needs - weapons dating back to the 13th century. What an eye opener the latter proved to be - all those suits of amour for the royal children, kings, queens and horses. I felt very sorry for the poor horses who had to wear such heavy armour, and then go into battle - at least the knights were willing to fight, at least I presume so. But the children's armour was just for show!! But all those weapons to kill people - much of it on behalf of the Holy Roman Empire - were horrendous. No '"do unto others as you would be done by" in their thinking. Like many other Spanish cities Madrid was ruled by the Muslims until the Christians fought them and took over. In fact the site where the Madrid royal palace is built was a Muslim citadel in the 10th century although the Spanish royal court didn't move to Madrid from Toledo until the 15th century. All the information we were given made me realise how
little I know of the history of Spain; something which I intend to redress when I get home. Kev said he intends to re-read a book we have on the bookshelf at home 'The History of the Arabs' - he read it some time ago but said it will be much more interesting and relevant to read it after we've been able to glimpse some of the history and culture for ourselves. The opulence of the royal apartments - which we weren't allowed to photo - had to be seen to be believed. I think it rivals the Palace of Versailles and has the distinction of being the largest royal palace in Western Europe in size, with a combined area of over 135,000 m² and more than 2,800 rooms. While the palace is impressive in size alone, I was really amazed by the broad range of styles used to decorate the rooms. No two rooms appear to have been done in the same manner, richly decorated by artists such as Velázquez, Tiepolo, Mengs, Gasparini, Juan de Flandes, Caravaggio, and Goya. AND in the music room is the world's only complete Stradivarius string quintet instruments which are of course played on
certain occasions!
Having spent a fair bit of time either on buses or planes I have also been pondered on the mixture of cultures and human behaviour. In general I think people are a very tolerant and patient which I found quite impressive. And even more impressive is the tolerance and respect which, on the whole, we show to each other on a personal level - Muslims, Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddists, Calathumpians etc. It seems to me those two subjects you're not supposed to bring up - politics and religion - are to blame for so much of the dark side of humankind.
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neta
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Iced Coffee
I did love the iced coffee in the previous blog.