At the Cathedral

Chris took some really great pictures of the cathedral.

This is the chapel, which I totally loved. Half of these pictures are just from the chapel. It was really small and old, and the insense was thick in the air. The colors were so bold in the main part of the cathedral, but in the chapel it was all quite simple.

So imagine my surprise when Katy tells me, months later, as she’s looking over these pictures, that that thing on the altar is the Holy Freaking Grail.

Wow.

“Most likely candidate” holy freaking grail.

Let’s see… an[n]o D[omi]ni MCCLXXX (love the X!) nono XIII KL Dece[m]b[e]r obiit r de belestar decani ual[?]nt cui a ni[?]a requiescat i[?] pag[?]… well, my latin’s not that good anymore.

This looks almost like a different church! I didn’t walk through the whole church, just in the main area and up the tower. It was mostly dark stone and candles… this must have been built at a different time.

This was all in the main Cathedral section, at the cross end; this was one of the arms of the cross.

The head of the cross. (I think some skaters left graffiti on that table there, though.)

The other arm of the cross.

And back to a closer look at the first arm of the cross.

(Can I pleaseprettyplease get a full-frame camera someday??)

Yeah, the cathedral was nice, but I kept coming back to the chapel. (It must have been because of the HOLY FREAKING GRAIL right there.)

Don’t you mean “black and white altar with Holy Freaking Grail”?

This is the chapel ceiling: you know, the ceiling above the HFG.

I’m not sure how well you can tell, but this window was built at this crazy angle… I’m guessing it’s so you can stand at the center of the cathedral and see clearly out of it or something… I really don’t know. Just looked weird from here, sort of Escher-esque.

Off to the side of the cathedral, sort of behind the chapel, was this little museum. In it were these models of the cathedral as it changed over the centuries. I wish, now, that I had gotten a picture of which year these models represented.

So in this model, they have the bell-tower, though it’s not physically connected to the cathedral.

I think this one is the same as the last one. You can see the little rounded-triangle window on the mostly-separate chapel on the front/right of the model, inside of which, of course, is the HFG.

This final model shows the cathedral as it is today. You can see that it grew out to connect to the bell-tower and chapel.

No idea what it was, but it says Sacramento at the bottom, so it was probably a gift from the Governator or something.

This was the walkway between the cathedral and the chapel. I kept going back there, so kept walking through here. And each time I’d stop and look up. (You could first smell the insence in this room.) And, though she’s not in the picture, this largish nun with a moustache was hanging out in a nook off of this walkway, selling souvenirs. (I would have had my back to her in this picture.) And she kept giving me dirty looks! I’m like, what?! I’m not the one with the sinister moustache!

(I should have taken her picture at the very end, then run out of there. I don’t think she could have caught me.)

At this point I was pretty much done with the cathedral, but Katy and the kids still hadn’t come down from the bell-tower. So I took off my 14mm and put on my 50mm and decided to take another look at things. Like this little cross on the wall of one of the columns in the main cathedral area.

This is the rose window from one of the arms of the cross.

Holy Freaking Chickenbone? I really don’t know.

Close-up of Arnold’s gift.

And then I went back in the HFG chapel for the 3rd or 4th time.

The roundy-triangle window in the chapel.

According to Wikipedia: “One of the supposed Holy Grails, present around the world, is revered in one of this cathedral’s chapels; this grail has been defended as the true Holy Grail; indeed, most Christian historians all over the world declare that all their evidence points to this Valencian chalice as the most likely candidate for being the authentic cup used at the Last Supper. It was the official papal chalice for many popes, and has been used by many others, most recently by Pope Benedict XVI, on July 9, 2006. This chalice dates from the 1st century, and was given to the cathedral by king Alfons el Magnànim in 1436.”

You can actually see the HFG in this shot. Again, let me just say: Wow.

Grail-shaped beacon? One of the windows in the HFG chapel. (Actually, it’s the same window as in the very first picture, but severely underexposed compared to that one.)

This window is above main entrance, at the foot of the cross.