A brief report from the road. My wanderings took me to Toledo. The one half an hour on the train from Madrid (Spain), not the one in Ohio. It actually reminds me a lot of Durham, in England, where I lived and worked for three years. I’ll leave you to look a bit at their geography, strategic history, and so forth, to see why. You can start by glancing at the maps I clipped for you for clues.
I enjoyed it quite a bit, although I shall have to go again to explore more thoroughly. 
(Side note: Is it me, or are all noses by El Greco on whatever subject pretty much the same nose?) I noticed an amusing thing in the cathedral (actually several, but I’ll report this one). I was taking a few (no flash; don’t disturb) pictures of one or two things (aren’t those choir pews lovely?) when one of the cathedral staff called out “no photos” to me. So I stopped, although I note that all the wildly flash-photoing people in the vicinity carried on…
But then I noticed that next to particularly sacred things they had some charming graphics about things you’re not supposed to do. I could not resist whipping out the camera to take a quick (and hence a bit shaky) snap to share with you (left: click for larger view)… 
Then I had to leave because it was extremely cold in the cathedral due to my wearing only skimpy shorts and tank top… er, with a baseball cap. Oh, and my giant 1980s video camera was getting heavy, my 1980s satellite phone lookalike was about to start ringing, and I was hungry for some… (yellow?) toast.
-cvj
I like how the cameras (video and pic) both have red marks through them additionally. So does that make it like a double negative? 😉
(My church wanderings took me to the ever-lovely Notre Dame today and to the Pantheon, where I was delighted to discover the French have hung a giant Foucault pendulum in the middle in lieu of a space for religious services in their national church. Go science!)
P.S.
Not sure about yellow toast, but don’t eat the yellow snow!
Glad you could enjoy a bit of 🙂 humor, while yet, still appreciating the beautifully ornately carved choir pews. I hope you find other thoughts of interest on your fortunate tour of such an amazing bit of history.
Travels of joy and peace,
Ciao!
Do you have any plans to head to Santiago de Compostela? Give us a shout if you’d like to come to this neck of the woods and it would be a pleasure to show you around here.
When Mr. K and I were in Toledo, it was November, and it was cold and dark and rainy and it seemed we were the only tourists in the whole town and everything seemed to be shut down and when we went into the only Cathedral we saw, it was cold and dark and might as well have been rainy and we didn’t stay very long and damn! but we didn’t notice those choir stalls.