Weekend trip to Toledo :)

(View from the bus tour)

Friday March 12th-Chrissy and I took off on a 1:30 am bus to Madrid (about 4 1/2- 5 hours) followed by a 30 minute train from Madrid to Toledo. We arrived in Toledo early morning and were ready to start our day. First thing: finding our hostel. Not as easy as one would think, since the station didn't have a map and the information center was hiding somewhere within the city walls. So we grabbed our luggage and trucked up the side of the city's walls, 2 gigantic hills and then started asking people what direction our hostel was in. After an hour or so we found success in the back of the city (which is the only thing we knew about the location of our hostel). Check-in wasn't till 1:00pm, so we dropped our stuff off, asked them for a map and headed for the Cathedral. The Cathedral was beautiful, and just like the other ones seen in Europe, completely full of unbelievable detail (top left photo below). The city itself is gorgeous, made completely of bricks, with castles, old-fashioned brick bridges and surrounded by a city wall. The streets were small, and yet vehicles still manage to get through them, within inches of us many times as we stood flat against the wall. One area we went to in the city was Puerta del Sol which had a beautiful view of the area surrounding the central city (top right photo below). We went to Mezquita del Cristo de la Luz and also the Iglesia de los Jesuitas. Here we saw the church and went inside. All the walls were white which I'd never seen before (Bottom right photo below). We were actually able to go to the top of the towers and see the bells and take pictures of the views. We walked into a few gift shops and the lady of one loved explaining everything to us about the different things in the store, it was informative and in Spanish--so good practice :) Afterwards we ended up at Monasterio de S. Juan de los Reyes which was interesting because it had a lot of chains on two sides of the building...



















**I couldn't believe we were in Toledo-in my tour book I was like wow, I would love to go there, but since it was south of Madrid, I didn't think I'd be able to, but this weekend was definitely a success**
Saturday March 13th-Today Chrissy and I started off eating breakfast by the river. Our hostel was directly next to Rio Tajo. The river was beautiful and there was a mountain-like hill across from us with jagged rock. Afterward we went into the city again, deciding to go on a 5 euro bus tour that would take us on the outskirts of the city in order to take pictures of the city. It was a double-decker bus and awesome for only 5 euro. The pictures we got from it were great. Right before the tour we had gone to the Alcazar (palace which is now a library-photo below on left). It was gigantic and beautiful, and across from the Alcazar, across the river and on a hill was an old (small) castle (photo below on right). After the tour we went to the Museum of Santa Cruz. There were tapestries in one large part of the museum, and through another door there was a pretty plaza that had a couple exhibitions off of them. Then there were ruins within the plaza on the walls. One of the exhibitions was full of bowls/plates/ceramics/tiles all decorated differently. The other exhibition was full of paintings, one was El Greco's.













After lunch we weren't sure where to head to first, so we took off to the Iglesia (Church) de Los Jesuitas and took pictures of the outside. Then we headed to the main Cathedral and bought tickets to go inside. Definitely glad we did, our culture professor wouldn't have been too happy if we hadn't. It was absolutely massive inside. Unfortunately we weren't able to take pictures inside. Detail was, once again, everywhere. It's so hard to describe, but there's two sections in the center of the cathedral. There were smaller rooms to look in all along the front. There were a couple rooms that were worship rooms for smaller services. One room was filled with paintings by famous artists like El Greco, Goya, Velaquez. The ceiling was painted magnificently by a Jordan Lucas I believe.. This room had 3 small rooms branch off of it. One was of more paintings-one was Raphael, the next room had different objects on display and the last one had different wear the cardinals had worn, many faded and now old. The stained glass everywhere was beautiful.
After the Cathedral we looked in a few stores and headed toward Sinagoga Sta M La Blanca and also saw Escuela (School) de Artes y Oficios along the way. We ended our day in a park that overlooked an old brick bridge in the distance and jagged rocks and beautiful hills.
Toledo is a beautiful city and a lot of the experience was through walking the small streets and seeing the views and the different buildings.
Sunday March 14th-We went into the city and ate breakfast. Not a lot was open being a Sunday in Spain. We then spent the remainder of our day in different plazas and enjoying the sun and nice weather before heading back to Bilbao. Our trip back went smoothly-getting back to Madrid and then taking the metro to the bus stop (we got a little frantic looking for our bus, but found it in time), then it was the long trek back to Bilbao. :)