Touring Toledo: Day 1

The past week of class was exceptionally good. Why is that? We only had three days of class followed by an overnight trip to Toledo, a smaller city not far from Madrid. It took a long bus ride to get there, even longer considering a Spanish law that says we have to stop for at least 45 minutes on the way, but we made it by about 2 PM on Thursday.

Before entering the actual city, we stopped at the "Windmills of La Mancha," which are an important part of the famous story of Don Quixote. In the story, he fights the windmills believing them to be monsters. It was great to finally be in the countryside and the windmills were huge.

The first thing I noticed about Toledo when we arrived is that it was much hillier than Sevilla. For this reason, nobody was riding bikes and running was difficult to say the least.

When we got to the hotel the girls were all anxious to see who there new roommates would be for the night, but us three guys knew we would not be separated. When we first entered our room, we thought there was a problem with the power because none of the lights turned on. Luckily, we figured out that we had to put our hotel key in a special slot in order for them to work before asking the front desk. I am guessing they do this to save on electricity, since it is much more expensive in Spain.

After settling in, we went on our first tour to a church called Santo Tomé. The church was famous for its huge painting by El Greco, about 15 by 12 feet. The painting depicts a burial on earth while people in heaven are taking care of the body's spirit. One of the people in the painting is actually  El Greco himself and he also hid his son in the picture.

The courtyard in the monastery 

Next, we went to a monastery. There was a huge courtyard for the monks to pray along with a huge worship center. To most, the sanctuary would seem very fancy. However, it was actually considered dull and simple because there were not that many paintings or decorations. Nonetheless, it was still a huge room with amazing architecture.

After the tours, we were free to explore the city. As we explored, we found sword and knife shops around almost every corner. We soon found out that this was because Toledo is where all of the swords from "The Lord of the Rings" movies were crafted.