Holy Toledo

Friday was our day trip to Toledo!!! You know how much I love day trips. I had never even seen pictures of Toledo So I did not at all expect to see so much beauty! It is such a small and spectacular city. I have little faith in the ability of cameras capturing the real beauty of things, but I was surprised to find that these pictures turned out pretty good. Yes, Toledo is THAT beautiful. We got to have a tour guide show us around the town for the first three hours of the day. He was such a wonderful and entertaining tour guide. Sometimes you can get some terrible tour guides that are soooo boring but he was hilarious and very good at his job. He took us through the Cathedral and the Mosque and we got to see both of El Greco's most famous art pieces that are still here in Toledo. They are a million times more beautiful in person. The last three hours of our day spend in Toledo we were allowed to go off on

our own and explore the city. I went off with some of the girls in the group and wandered the streets looking at all the small stores and finding a ledge where it had an incredible view of the river that runs around the city. We could even see some people rock climbing on the rocks above the river. I wish that were my everyday activity. This city is a lot different than Madrid or Alcala because the streets were steep up and down hills unlike the flat streets of Madrid. We were constantly going up and down hill which is quite tiring. These streets were a lot more complex too. Very Narrow and less clean than Madrid but so much better because it is less new and industrialized than Madrid. I hate to compare Toledo to Madrid because Madrid is great! But is all I have to go off of. Toledo has this cute little city but just over the hand rail you have the nature side and an incredible view of a river. These are the best of two worlds to me. I really

wish we could have spend more time here. Maybe a couple weeks would have been fine with me. I know there are so many wonderful things to see in Spain but it just seems like everything new I see is my new favorite. Everything is just so beautiful here!!! America is wonderful. Dont get me wrong. But we have absolutely no history. No ancient architecture. If we see something getting old in America, we immediately tear it down and build a new and improved building and all the history of that building has disappeared. My favorite part of Toledo was how beautiful the river was around the city but that is only because I am in love with anything pretty in nature. Other than that I loved seeing El Greco's paintings and going inside that huge Cathedral. It is amazing how intricate all the detail is inside the Cathedral. It one of the pictures it shows a hole in the roof where the light in coming into the building. They destroyed a part of the roof there to let sunlight in because that area in the Cathedral did not receive any light. You would think,

yeah, lets just put a window in there or something. But they thought above and beyond that when they put the hole in the roof. They created this entire scene as if there are angels coming into the Cathedral or leaving back into the heavens. It was hard to capture but hopefully you are able to see this scene in the picture attached. I thought it was incredible how someone could paint things to look so real.

Toledo is famous for a food called Mazapan and it is told that once when the town didnt have any food or something all they ate was this stuff. Probably is not how the story goes...but I am sure I got the gist of it. This food is now a delicacy and you apparently have to try it when you go to Toledo, so I did! It was alright. I mean I liked it a lot but it is one of those kinds of food you can only have a little at a time or else you will get sick of it fast. It is super sweet and reminds me of a food I have not quite recalled yet. Like some sugar cookie my grandma used to bring for

Christmas dinner back in the day. But softer. I dont know, but it was pretty good. This picture of me with my thumbs up in front of the Mazapan store obviously shows that I liked it.

If this tiny city shows only a portion of the beauty found in Spain, then I cannot wait to see the rest of it. This has been only the first trip and we have so many more to come. All of this is nothing like I expected it to be. I dont even know what I expected it to be to be honest but this exceeds any dream of Spain I ever had the months and months before departure.

All of these photos are taken by me! Please Enjoy!