BOX 250: Toledo, Segovia, Sheboygan, L.A.

I took this photo in April 2004 when I was about to go to my first concert, a matinee, at the recently-opened Frank-Gehry-designed Walt Disney Hall in Downtown Los Angeles. I had a great time, but before saying more, I need to return to January of that year, when Anne and I and a group of over 40 people were completing our UW-Sheboygan-sponsored visit to Spain.

Though based in Segovia, in the mountains to the north of Madrid, we made several excursions to other parts of Castile, and even beyond, as I've reported in my last two posts. Late in the trip we made one last excursion: to Toledo, a two-hour bus ride south. The bus left us off on the eastern edge of the Old City, and we made our way in the course of the day toward the west end, where the bus would pick us up after we crossed a historic bridge over the Tagus (Tajo) River. I don't have very strong memories of Toledo compared to those of Segovia (where I'd spent a great deal of time, including previous visits) or Cordoba (where the splendors of the Mezquita and the Alcazar Gardens, not to mention the warm weather, made an overwhelming impression). But I can show you the few pictures I took during our day in Toledo, providing a few glimpses of what is after all one of the great cities of Spain. Our stops included the Hospital de Tavera, built in the 1500s, with its handsome patio with double arches:

. . . and the Museum of Santa Cruz, housed in another building of the 1500s, with a spectacular entranceway:

We stopped at the Cathedral too, though I have only one photo, showing its spire from a distance. I'll pair it with a shot of looking down a narrow street toward the hills beyond:

Another stop was the San Juan de los Reyes Monastery. There were orange trees in fruit there, just as there were in Cordoba, though Toledo is much farther north.

Our wanderings eventually took us to an archway opening onto the St Martin Bridge. Here you see some of our party, including, toward toward the back with the blue scarf, Anne's Aunt Roberta and, farther back and left of her, Anne's mother, Judy:

Here is Anne talking with Chris Scholke, who was on some of our previous trips as well:

And here are more of our group crossing the bridge, though too far away to identify:

I tried taking some photos looking back over the Tagus at the rugged hills of Toledo, thinking about El Greco's painting of the city; but the results were disappointing:

Back in Segovia we continued to enjoy the sights and restaurants of the city. One morning we awoke to see the weekly market being constructed on the Plaza Mayor beneath our hotel windows:

One memory of our shopping at the market is that a student requested two oranges from a vendor but found herself buying two kilos (four-and-a-half pounds). It was all fine, because she brought them to our room to share at a little party we were having that evening. Here's a shot of the market with part of the Cathedral in the background:

Back home at some point we had our grandsons, Sam and Forest, stay overnight. That's our cat Stony that Forest is petting:

In April, during spring break, I went to LA to see my friends (whom you've met in many previous L.A. posts). This occasion must have been my first visit to the Getty Center, since I took quite a few pictures of it. I don't know why I hadn't been there on previous visits, since the Richard-Meier-designed complex had opened over six years earlier, but it instantly became one of my favorite places in the city. Here you see the hovertrain that carries visitors from the parking garage to the hillside campus:

I'll let most of the pictures of the museum campus speak for themselves:

A cactus garden extends beyond one of the buildings:

And a larger garden that you can walk through extends from another part of the campus:

There's a zigzag path to this garden that has a stream of water flowing through it:

In the next photo we're looking upward beyond those tree-trellises of bougainvillea:

Here's one more view looking back from the garden:

As you might imagine, it's a great place to spend an afternoon--not to mention the art to be seen inside the buildings.

My friend Gloria was living at this time out in San Gabriel, where she and her then husband, Feng Lin, had a cottage. Gloria had don a great job of cultivating roses around the property:

It was with them that I saw the LA Philharmonic matinee at Disney Hall. This box of slides ends with one more shot of the hall:

That summer Anne and I went once again to Hawai'i, taking a group of UW-Sheboygan students--and some others--on the itinerary that we had followed in 2002. I'll show pics of this trip in my next post.