I was not impressed with Avila, doubly disappointing as I am so attached to St Teresa. I followed signs to the visitor centre, an impressive modern edifice in the shadow of the ancient city walls. Although a large building, it housed only a few static displays and a desk with one receptionist. She gave me a map of the of the town which showed a large number of places of interest. She circled the main sites connected with St Teresa, which was interesting as I did not tell her that was what I wanted.
It didn't strike me as strange at the time, as I assumed that must be why most people would go there. Only reading the map-cum-leaflet later did I find that it made no reference to the saint, except her connection with certain buildings. It seems that the walled old city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the leaflet was devoted to extolling the architecture. It was also very confusing as it had two sets of numbers for the buildings, only one of which related to the numbers on the map.
I eventually found this convent, which is supposed to be the primary place of pilgrimage for those devoted to Teresa. Sadly, visitors are treated as tourists, not as pilgrims, and pretty unwelcome ones at that! The section that houses the saint's relics, and has a small bookshop, was manned by someone who made it very clear that all he really wanted was to be left alone to read his book.
The church had an aggressively worded sign telling tourists not to come in during services, and lots of notices saying "silence". It was noticeable that no-one seemed to feel moved to be silent, perhaps because there was no atmosphere of prayer - a marked contrast to Lourdes where thousands of people made little noise at all. It was the absence of prayer that was so upsetting, since Teresa believed that teaching her nuns to pray was the key to everything. There was not a single notice inviting visitors to pray. The only thing there was a curious coin-operated device for lighting flickering electric candles. (I saw one later in another church - perhaps there's a ban on real candles because of the fire risk.)
The most pleasant place was the museum housed in the crypt. This had sacred music playing, and was well laid out with items relating to St Teresa and the subsequent history of her foundations - including a whole convent of nuns who were guillotined in the French reign of terror. (Someone has just written a play about it, according to an item I heard on the radio just before coming away.)
My experiences here weren't the end of my disillusionment with Avila. More pictures and travellers' tails later. I'm going cross-eyed looking at tnis tiny screen!
