España, parte uno
Spain has gone without a hitch. I am staying with two lovely people, Lola and Roberto, friends of my friends Vincent and Alex. I arrived and went straight from the airport to a picnic that Lola had planned with friends in the park. Chorizo, spaghetti, bread, and Spanish tortilla and we were having agooood time! Luckily there were some neat college students nearby having a picnic/hootenany. We sang together, and they told me about the hippest place to hear jazz. Sunday night brought a blues session with a completely packed house...we were playing until 4:30 in the morning!
I REALLY loved the Museo de Reina Sofia. Modern art. Yum. Saw Picasso's Guernica and tons of other beautiful things. The Prado, on the other hand, wasn't as interesting to me, but I guess that's just taste. Now onto maybe the most interesting museum of all...EL MUSEO DEL JAMON! Yes, this is a small chain of restaurant/cefeterias specializing in ham and cured meats of all sorts. I sampled some yum yums there as well as manchegos. The aged manchego (o manchego curado) is absolutely do DIE for. It has that aged texture of a little crytallization, like aged gryuere, and is just wonderfully funky.
Tuesday night I was invited to sing again at El Junco and again we were there all night. A super fun time. Surprisingly aggressive in terms of the music, though. The place was packed like a sardine can and loud, and it was kind of a New York session scene. All fast, all the time. But the good news is they were super happy to play with me...they loved singers so that was great fun and again we were there til after 3 a.m. I don't know how the Spanish do it. They don't even think about dinner until like 9:30 p.m...how does everyone get up and go to work?
also, the other day we went to see a theatre show that turned out to be the most inspiring thing I've even seen! AMAZING...
http://www.bosquimanoskoryak.com
On Thursday I went to Toledo, Spain. Toledo is the old capital, and it gets the prize for the most charming city on the trip thus far. Think Rome is romantic? Toledo is just the greatest. Spent the day running around with new friends Pablo and Alcira (incidentally from SoCal and one of the most interesting people I have met thus far...a super duper liberal evangelical christian, which seems to be a contradiction of terms, but she's way open minded, i love it!). Saw an old San Juan de los Reyes (beautiful) and two ancient synagogues that dated pre 1492 (before Jews were kicked out of Spain), one of which was absolutely stunning, both of which were later turned into churches. The first, Synagoga De Santa Maria Blanca, http://www.sacred-destinations.com/spain/toledo-sinagoga-de-santa-maria-la-blanca.htm (it has the name as it was later turned into a church) looks more like a mosque than a synagogue. Which brings back around the blog I wrote in Nepal. If you go back far enough, we're all one. Spawned from the same anscestors, praying to the same all mighty, eating fruit from the same earth. It was easy to look at the architecture at the next synagogue, El Transito Synagogue (which also now also now houses the Sephardic Museum), and be stunned by the obvious Arabic influence, something we so rarely see in Ashkenazic Judiasm in the States. El Transito is gorgeous--and was kept in its original form even when used as a church, so the original structure remains. Tons of pictures to come. Sitting there staring up at the Mudejar ceiling it was so clear to me the silliness of our society's focus on our human differences, as opposed to similarities.
On that I'll leave you. This weekend I think I'm going to go to a festival in Colmenar, where I'll get to eat chorizo and see bullfights. Then Monday I'm off to Marakech, Morocco!
Sorry about the lack of pics with this blog. I'm on a Linux comp, and haven't figured out how to download picasa...
All for now...
s
I REALLY loved the Museo de Reina Sofia. Modern art. Yum. Saw Picasso's Guernica and tons of other beautiful things. The Prado, on the other hand, wasn't as interesting to me, but I guess that's just taste. Now onto maybe the most interesting museum of all...EL MUSEO DEL JAMON! Yes, this is a small chain of restaurant/cefeterias specializing in ham and cured meats of all sorts. I sampled some yum yums there as well as manchegos. The aged manchego (o manchego curado) is absolutely do DIE for. It has that aged texture of a little crytallization, like aged gryuere, and is just wonderfully funky.
Tuesday night I was invited to sing again at El Junco and again we were there all night. A super fun time. Surprisingly aggressive in terms of the music, though. The place was packed like a sardine can and loud, and it was kind of a New York session scene. All fast, all the time. But the good news is they were super happy to play with me...they loved singers so that was great fun and again we were there til after 3 a.m. I don't know how the Spanish do it. They don't even think about dinner until like 9:30 p.m...how does everyone get up and go to work?
also, the other day we went to see a theatre show that turned out to be the most inspiring thing I've even seen! AMAZING...
http://www.bosquimanoskoryak.com
On Thursday I went to Toledo, Spain. Toledo is the old capital, and it gets the prize for the most charming city on the trip thus far. Think Rome is romantic? Toledo is just the greatest. Spent the day running around with new friends Pablo and Alcira (incidentally from SoCal and one of the most interesting people I have met thus far...a super duper liberal evangelical christian, which seems to be a contradiction of terms, but she's way open minded, i love it!). Saw an old San Juan de los Reyes (beautiful) and two ancient synagogues that dated pre 1492 (before Jews were kicked out of Spain), one of which was absolutely stunning, both of which were later turned into churches. The first, Synagoga De Santa Maria Blanca, http://www.sacred-destinations.com/spain/toledo-sinagoga-de-santa-maria-la-blanca.htm (it has the name as it was later turned into a church) looks more like a mosque than a synagogue. Which brings back around the blog I wrote in Nepal. If you go back far enough, we're all one. Spawned from the same anscestors, praying to the same all mighty, eating fruit from the same earth. It was easy to look at the architecture at the next synagogue, El Transito Synagogue (which also now also now houses the Sephardic Museum), and be stunned by the obvious Arabic influence, something we so rarely see in Ashkenazic Judiasm in the States. El Transito is gorgeous--and was kept in its original form even when used as a church, so the original structure remains. Tons of pictures to come. Sitting there staring up at the Mudejar ceiling it was so clear to me the silliness of our society's focus on our human differences, as opposed to similarities.
On that I'll leave you. This weekend I think I'm going to go to a festival in Colmenar, where I'll get to eat chorizo and see bullfights. Then Monday I'm off to Marakech, Morocco!
Sorry about the lack of pics with this blog. I'm on a Linux comp, and haven't figured out how to download picasa...
All for now...
s
posted by sara leib at 5:23 AM
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