As a traveler, you indulge me Spain. You indulge my love for history, and you indulge my (new)\u00a0love for pastries. \u00a0You even tease my apathy towards art, with your Gothic Cathedrals, your Grand Mosque, your Picassos and your Gaudis.\u00a0 Oh, and your Sagrada Familias too.\u00a0 How dare you impress me like that? Let us not forget the \u00a8Ba\u00f1os \u00c1rabes\u00a8.\u00a0 Your Arab history left us with a spa; I mean really, is that even allowed?\u00a0 Spain, you outdid yourself with that one.<\/p>\n
Last week I visited C\u00f3rdoba, Sevilla and Barcelona.\u00a0 C\u00f3rdoba and Sevilla were with my program, and I went to Barcelona with a few friends.<\/p>\n
In C\u00f3rdoba we saw a clash of everything.\u00a0 This small but incredibly significant (historically speaking) town is in Andalusia, formerly called al-Andalus when it was under Muslim rule.\u00a0 Before the Reconquista (when the Christians kicked out the Muslims and Jews), C\u00f3rdoba was the capital of the Muslim empire in the West.\u00a0 It is the home of the Jewish philosopher Maimonides as well as the Grand Mosque, (or \u00a8Mezquita\u00a8) and the Cathedral that was later built inside.\u00a0 C\u00f3rdoba is surprisingly small, and within two hours of walking around I had seen most of the city.\u00a0 From a dog\u00b4s eye view, at least.\u00a0 To be a bit clearer, I mean that I walked all over the city and saw the outside of buildings and museums but did not enter.\u00a0 For me, the city was my museum.\u00a0 The average building was ancient architecture, and the original cobblestone bridged the soles of my shoes with those of Maimonides several centuries earlier.\u00a0 I felt connected to the history of this old city as I wandered accidentally by an old castle, and got lost in the barrio Judio (Jewish Quarter).\u00a0 I grazed my hand across the wall of the wise, old buildings.\u00a0 I even spoke to them in my mind.\u00a0 \u00a8You have seen so much.\u00a0 You have witnessed the clashes of two of the largest religions.\u00a0 But you have also seen the harmony. You probably have some secrets that would really help our world, don\u00b4t you? I mean, you\u00b4re pretty old, and therefore you are probably pretty darn wise too.\u00a8 There\u00b4s a little taste of what goes on in my mind.\u00a0 Did I really just put that on the internet? The fact that I speak to walls?<\/p>\n
After I finished giving myself a tour of the city (and once I finished my conversations with inanimate objects) I was taken on a professional tour of the Grand Mosque.\u00a0 This is where I truly felt a connection with the past, but not in the way you would think.<\/p>\n
Before I was born, my parents and my 1-year-old brother lived in Madrid where my father went to school for a year.\u00a0 My parents and my brother took a trip to C\u00f3rdoba, and while many important events have taken place in the Mezquita, nothing, I\u00b4m sure, was quite like the day my brother took his first steps.\u00a0 Yes, my brother learned to walk in THE GRAND MOSQUE IN C\u00d3RDOBA! I have grown up with the telling of this event, listening to how he clumsily, cautiously walked from pillar to pillar.\u00a0 While I found the history of the Mezquita fascinating, nothing was quite as wonderful as knowing that I was in the place where Ben took his first steps.\u00a0 Yes, I was also standing in the remains of two great empires, the tangible and most telling evidence of the Reconquista, but nothing the guide told us about the history of the Mosque-turned-Cathedral could have been cooler to me than the fact that Ben learned to walk here.\u00a0 The guide probably could have said \u00a8Hey, I see the Ghosts of Isabel and Ferdinand standing next to you\u00a8and I would have replied\u00a8That\u00b4s cool.\u00a0\u00a8Nice to meet you Mr.\u00a0and Mrs. Reyes Cat\u00f3licas.\u00a0\u00a0But did you know that my brother learned to walk here?\u00a8<\/p>\n
The Mezquita truly is amazing and I was able to appreciate its grandeur despite the distraction of my personal family history.\u00a0 There is everything from Gothic to baroque, to a crucified Jesus hanging beneath the typical arches of Arab architecture, while catholic saints solemnly stare in the direction of Mecca. Our guide reminded us plenty of times that this was no longer a Mosque, it was a Catholic Cathedral.\u00a0 But honestly, I could think of it neither as a Cathedral nor as a Mosque but as a testament to the dark past and violent interactions between the Muslims and Christians.\u00a0 For me it stood as a reminder of the beauty of harmony (as I imagined baby Ben roaming through the hundreds of pillars) and the pain of conflict.\u00a0 I mean seriously, did they have to build there Cathedral INSIDE the Mosque?\u00a0 That just seems childish.\u00a0 We get it, you re-conquered the south.\u00a0 You built it INSIDE?\u00a0 That\u00b4s just lemon juice on a papercut right there.\u00a0 However, while the Cathedral inside the Mosque is not typically seen as harmonious, after all these centuries the two seemed to work together in their grandeur.\u00a0 But between you and me, the Grand Mosque definitely won the\u00b4 I\u00b4m really big and cool\u00a8competition.<\/p>\n
Let\u00b4s move on to a more relaxing historical site, the Arab baths.\u00a0 This is where, several centuries ago the Arabs–take a guess–bathed! The baths consist of three rooms: one with glacier water baths, one with medium temperature baths, and one with what feels like baths of boiled water.\u00a0 In Granada, I\u00b4m forced to endure luke warm showers (I have such a hard life!) so the room with the hottest baths was my temporary heaven.\u00a0 When I stepped in for the fist time, I felt a mix of scalding pain, delight with the burn, and thoughts like \u00a8Oh my god this is where Abderraman and the like used to bathe!\u00a8\u00a0And you won\u00b4t believe this, but my program paid for everyone to get a massage! It was a wonderful day of history and relaxation in the colorful city of C\u00f3rdoba.<\/p>\n
That night we took a bus to Sevilla, a city much larger than C\u00f3rdoba.\u00a0 In Sevilla we started the day with a tour of a palace that was both Muslim and Christian and one time.\u00a0 The Alcazar Palace has incredible geometric carvings populating nearly every flat surface.\u00a0 This is typical Muslim art, because in Islam one is not permitted to depict sentient images in any way.<\/p>\n
Once again, we went through the old Jewish quarter, and we were reminded, quite briefly in my opinion, of the massacres that took place during the Reconquista.\u00a0 I am Jewish by blood (my mother is Jewish) but I was raised in a very religiously relaxed household.\u00a0 We celebrated the big Jewish holidays like Roshashana, Yom Kippur (sometimes), Hanukkah, Passover and the occasional Shabbat.\u00a0 Our celebrations were done more out of tradition than devotion but I always enjoyed them tremendously. (I mean what kid wouldn\u00b4t enjoy eight nights of presents?) Anyway, I have always felt culturally Jewish, but for the most part\u00a0I have not been truly religious.\u00a0 However, every time I go to a historically Jewish place, my Jewish blood begins to rage like the parting of the Red Sea.\u00a0 When I was in Israel, I became so connected to my Judaism and my heritage that I got bat Mitzvahed in Tiberius.\u00a0 I had only been in Israel one week, but that\u00b4s how strongly I was affected by the holy land.\u00a0 I felt similar sentiments when I went to one of the only remaining Synagogues (prior to the Reconquista) in C\u00f3rdoba, and when I was taken through the streets of el barrio Judio in Sevilla.\u00a0 I\u00b4m Jewish, my people lived here.\u00a0 Jews walked here, worshipped here<\/em>.\u00a0 I understand that five minutes ago I was hardly Jewish at all, but right now, I am Jewish! Jewish and proud of it babe!<\/em> <\/em><\/p>\n Of course, after that our group was served a lunch of salad, flan, and a nice slab of pork.\u00a0 Right after my afternoon of fierce Jewish pride, I sit down to a lunch of pork.\u00a0 Like I said, the south of Spain is a land of many clashes.<\/p>\n Later I went to the most amazing Gothic Cathedral I probably will ever go to in my life.\u00a0 My roommate, Mary, is 6\u00b41\u00a8and let me just say, Gothic is her style! I really don\u00b4t know how tall these ceilings were, but they made me feel like an ant in a dog house. (I don\u00b4t mean to compare this Cathedral to a dog house, but for the sake of comparison, we\u00b4ll keep it).\u00a0 I felt smaller inside that Cathedral than I do swimming in the ocean.\u00a0 The Gothic style so tall because at the time it was believed that the taller the building, the closer it is to God.\u00a0 Gothic is dramatic, and overdone, and full of enthusiasm for the divine.\u00a0 This Cathedral really was reaching for the heavens on the very tips of its toes, and by golly it just may have succeeded.<\/p>\n Sevilla was a fun city.\u00a0 I wish I could have spent more time there (I only had about two days) but perhaps I will return.\u00a0 I left for Barcelona at nine o\u00b4clock at night and arrived at my hostel at 2:00 in the morning.\u00a0 While I would love to describe my travels in this fabulous city, I\u00a0must do it another day. My computer is temporarily(?) out of commission so I am at an internet cafe.\u00a0 I have been here for about an hour and a half and I would rather not spend all my saved up travel money at this cafe.\u00a0 I will just say this: Barcelona is, in fact one of the greatest cities that I have ever visited.\u00a0 It is the city of Gaudi, the city from which Columbus first departed to the new world, the city of the \u00b492 Olympics, the city of the futbal team\u00a0 Bar\u00e7a (and the city of their crazy fans, for that matter), and of course the city of pick-pocketters.\u00a0 You will be happy to know that we left Barcelona with all our possessions.\u00a0 Success! We evaded those professional pick-pocketers!\u00a0 We even went to a \u00a8futbal\u00a8game, and made it out alive.\u00a0 Now that there, my friend, is a success.<\/p>\n Next Stop: C\u00e1diz for Carnival.\u00a0 The thrid largest Carnival party in the world after Rio, Brazil, and of course Rome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As a traveler, you indulge me Spain. You indulge my love for history, and you indulge my (new)\u00a0love for pastries. \u00a0You even tease my apathy towards art, with your Gothic Cathedrals, your Grand Mosque, your Picassos and your Gaudis.\u00a0 Oh, … Continue reading