Toledo, Part II

Welcome to our new location! Several of you wanted to be able to post comments directly to the blog, and Tumblr doesn't make this easy for you, so here we are back on Blogger. You may remember this site from my other blogs like "A Course for Adventure!" and "Open Smile, Friendly Shore!" Never should have left.

So, we were in Toledo. Looking at cool things in the cathedral. And I promised you synagogues and food. I'm going to give you that and more as well.

The "Sinagoga del Tránsito" was especially meaningful to us. It's one of three medieval synagogues left in Spain, and my family really felt the poignancy of being in a place that was, in a sense, a monument to persecution. I was reminded of the Kid's reaction to the synagogue and graveyard in Barbados, where we had cause for the first time to discuss the sufferings of his ancestors on his mother's side. And maybe on his father's side, depending on how you interpret certain mysteries of my family's past.

Also great fun was the Iglesia San Román. When I first visited Toledo sixteen years ago, this was far and away my favorite spot. It's a church that was once a mosque, and that bears some architectural resemblance to one of Toledo's synagogues. Sadly, we couldn't take pics inside, but you can get an idea of what it's like here. A real mixture of artistic and architectural styles that testifies to the multiculturalism of medieval Toledo.

Now, for the food. We are on a mission to dramatically expand our knowledge of Spanish food, and this means paying special attention when we travel to regional specialties. A tough job, but someone's yadda yadda . . . In Toledo, this means, among other things, marzipan and venison. We had venison in a couple for forms, as a picadillo in a sandwich and as a collection of bits cooked up in a pan. We ate marzipan in traditional bite size form, and then in the blessed form of marzipan cake. For you Charlottesvillians, this is what ABC's Princess Cake wishes it were. We also had the best gazpacho we'd ever had. Actually, this was the first gazpacho that Zoë and the Kid had ever liked. The one I made for them was so onion-y that they had sworn off the dish altogether.

Now, I promised something extra. It turned out that we were in Toledo on the last day of a Jazz Festival. After having dinner, the Kid and I caught the concert, which was open-air, free, and right in front of the illuminated front entrance to the cathedral. To top it off, the performers were no slack-jawed yokels, but the extraordinary Benny Golson, with his band of top-notch European musicians. Zoë's knee hurt, so she went to the hotel, while the Kid and I grabbed a couple of the remaining seats and saw the whole thing. The Kid loved it. He even got Golson's autograph afterwards.

Are you looking for pictures? Well, tough. The reason I was using Tumblr in the first place was that Blogger makes it awkward to upload pictures. So those will be up on Facebook.

Readers, post away!!!