Ávila-City of churches, fingers, walls and tits!

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Greetings from Jerez de la Frontera! I journeyed back to the southwest part of Spain this weekend to visit my friend Jen and to hit up Carnaval in Cádiz, one of the biggest festivals of the year. Blog post chronicling this trip is forthcoming…But for now back to Castilla y León and the rest of my adventures last weekend!

So after saying hasta luego to my favorite city in Spain (Salamanca), I headed back to Ávila to spend the rest of my holiday weekend there with my flatmate Lucía and her awesome family! I was just so excited to be in an actual house where I don’t have to listen to my noisy neighbors and flatmates, and where I don’t have to risk a fire to take a shower or even to cook my own food. It was so nice to be around a family looking after you and cute dog to play with too. There was even central heating-what a luxury!

Now Ávila is a very charming city, located between Salamanca and Madrid. It is very old and very beautiful, and as legend has it, it was founded by one of Hercules’s sons. One of the things that makes it such and interesting place to visit is the fact that the old city is surrounded entirely by medieval walls (1090 CE). In fact these high stone walls are some of the best preserved in Spain, and it is the largest fully illuminated monument in the world. Very cool! I have seen many cathedrals, churches, castles, palaces, towers, and ruins, but I have not seen something like this before. When a city has something unique and distinct to offer its visitors, something very memorable, like Ávila and its walls, it really stays with me. We spent the morning walking along the top of the walls, and MAN was it cold and windy! I was so happy I spent time making my hair look nice-NOT! However, it was really cool to get to see all of these places with Lucía and her parents because they have lived there their entire lives and didn’t mind answering all my annoying questions and pointing out tons of interesting facts to me. Plus I loved hearing how proud they are of their city and country-something I think people tend to neglect back home.

medieval walls

Walking along the medieval walls

IMG_3975

Medieval walls or murallas

IMG_3986View of the walls, the old Jewish quarter and the snow-capped mountains in the distance

IMG_3994
More medieval walls
Now Ávila is really a gem of city because it is very beautiful, filled with lots of cool monuments and sights to visit, but without boatloads of tourists. When foreigners come to Spain, they tend to head to the big-name cities, like Madrid, Barcelona or Sevilla, and then to the south to the beaches, like Málaga or Marbella. Now I love these cities as much as the next person, but Spain has so much more to offer!! A place like Ávila has just as much history and culture as Córdoba, but it doesn’t have the name that draws tons of tourists, which I actually like a lot. It’s actually quite popular with Spanish tourists though, which if you are ever traveling, one great bit of advice is follow the locals! After walking (and tripping-oops!) around the walls for a few hours, we drove outside the old city to a place called Los cuatro postes (“The Four Posts”) which affords great views of the city and the walls. It also marks the spot where St. Teresa and her brother were captured by their uncle after trying to run away to seek martyrdom by the Muslims. Because who doesn’t want to remember a place like that?

IMG_4010Me and Lucía and her mom at Los cuatro postes

Ok, now I have mentioned Santa Teresa, I had better explain who she was. Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada is probably one of the most important women in the history of the Spanish Catholic Church. She was born in 1515. Raised by nuns, she joined the Carmelite order when she was only 20 years old. After suffering a temporary paralysis in her legs, she had a striking vision of hell which led to her decision to reform the Carmelite order. Now if you know anything about the 16th century Spanish Catholic Church, you should know that it was a far cry the simplicity, piety, and suffering preached 1500 years earlier, something Santa Teresa was well aware of. After her disturbing vision, she decided to revamp the Carmelites back to their original roots, calling for the strictest piety, poverty, and simplicity. These nuns even went barefoot (descalzadas) and whipped themselves. You can only imagine how popular this must have been with the rich, fat opulent Church. NOT. Santa Teresa founded many convents of the Carmelitas Descalzas all over Spain before she died in 1588 (ironically the same year as the defeat of the Spanish Armada by the English-something Spain has still not gotten over yet!), and she was canonized in 1622. In fact, you can still see the relic of her ring finger in the Convento de Santa Teresa, a relic which the dictator Franco kept by his bedside until his desk. Uh, can you say gross and creepy?

Santa Teresa de Jesús by Peter Paul Rubens (1615)

After seeing about a billion churches, we headed to the Monasterio de Santo Tomás later that afternoon. It was commissioned by Ferdinand and Isabel and completed in 1492. As the most famous king and queen of Spain, it was fascinating to see this monastery with so many symbols of their reign incorporated into the architecture. It is also where their only son, Don Juan, is buried. Lucía and I spent a lot of time playing around the cloisters and taking silly photos. We even explored some of the unused, unlocked rooms, which I am SURE were off limits, but sure made for some fun adventures. I mean, it’s their fault for not locking those doors and having no security, right? We ended up in the upper level choir where the Catholic Monarchs used to attend Mass. I even got to see the chair that Isabel used to sit in! Since she figured prominently in my thesis last year, I was super excited to see this! I also may or may not have sat in that chair.

IMG_4030 El Real Monasterio de Santo Tomás

IMG_4069Me and Isabel la Católica’s seat in the choir! EEEEP! And see that door?
We totally snuck in there too!

The next morning we woke up and it was snowing. WTF? We headed back into town to see the 12th century cathedral. It is actually really cool because it forms part of the medieval walls, making it almost a fortress. We got to walk right up to it when we were exploring the walls the other day. Outside there are many round, circular stones adorning the edges of the cathedral as decorations. Lucía told me that because of this it has earned the nickname among the locals as “la catedral de las tetas.” I think you can probably guess what that means in English. Afterward we began to notice that these round stones were a popular theme among many of the churches in Ávila, so we began to joke that Ávila was the city of tits. Childish I know, but hey, they started it! I feel like this is a perfect example of Spain being outwardly very Catholic and pious and religious, but in reality, they are totally not! Anyways, this cathedral is considered to be the first Gothic cathedral in Spain. Inside is very interesting too because many of the stones come from special quarry near Ávila that have a reddish color to them, earning them the nickname of bleeding stones.

IMG_4081View of the snow from my room that morning

IMG_4084Ávila’s ccathedral

Finally we headed to see the Basílica de San Vicente, a great sandstone Romanesque church with some later Gothic modifications. It was begun in the 11th century supposedly on the spot where San Vicente and his sisters were martyred by the Romans. Anyway, by the end of this trip I had seen enough medieval sandstone churches to last for the rest of the year, but hey this is Spain! Afterward, we stopped at a local bakery so that I could try yemas. Yemas are a typical sweet in Ávila that consist mostly of candied egg yolks. They are basically gooey egg yolks and sugar, and let me tell you, they are NOT so tasty. The consistency is as disgusting as the aftertaste. Take my advice, you should probably just skip this one. We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing in her house before heading back down to Córdoba. Ávila is a beautiful, almost hidden city that really merits a stop for a day or two on your way to Salamanca or to Portugal. It is a beautiful, quiet little place that if you let yourself visit, I promise you will not be disappointed.

IMG_4096The ceiling of la Basílica de San Vicente


Yemas from Ávila

Written by Liz and was published on March 6, 2011 in Uncategorized and tagged in , , , , , ,

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