La Catedral

In the last few days I have been to some of the "must sees" when visiting Alcalá de Henares. These include the Cathedral, the Convent of San Domingo, and the University of Alcalá itself. As always, everything is beautiful. My host mom, Cris, and sister, Laura, took me to the Cathedral, but when we arrived mass was in session. It was a weekday night and the place was packed. I really haven't noticed Spain being as religious as I had anticipated, but seeing how filled the Cathedral was I started to re-access my observations.
We went out for drinks (and tapas of course!) while we waited for mass to finish. The Cathedral is simply stunning. Not the ornate, covered in gold, type of beautiful, but the pure white marble and the simple lighting surrounding the enormous organ was truly breath-taking. We went to bring flowers to a statue of a Mary in extremely simple attire, Cris feels she has more of a connection with this type of Mary than one decorated in golds and silvers. While waiting for Cris to get a vase for the flowers, Laura and I were approached by one of the priests. He began conversation with the two of us asking our names, which is always a struggle for me, since A-man-da is not easily pronounced in Spain (it is more like A-mon-da). After a quick conversation he looks directly at me and calls me out on chewing gum in Church (oops!) Laura had some too and the two of us quickly put our hands to our mouths and apologized, the priest began laughing and informing us that gum is always put under the pews (good thing he wasn't actually serious!) Cris saved us and we proceeded to the statue of Mary and left the flowers for her asking for good health and happiness. We walked around for a few more minutes and viewed the tombs of two young martyr saints from Alcalá. What a absolutely beautiful place, I now understand why its always so crowded!

Organ in the Cathedral - It doesn't do it justice though!