Saturday was ISA's first excursion of the program, and we went to Toledo. It was about an hour bus trip away from Madrid, not too bad. When we arrived we had a short bus tour of the city then stopped at the top of the mountain for a great view of the entire place. It was beautiful! The rest of the day we spent in the heart of the city being mega tourists. Our tour guide was originally from Toledo and just about everything he told us on the tour was spoken in spanish...so naturally I got tired of trying to understand and missed some details...oopsie.
The first place we visited was San Juan de los Reyes, a monastery built for Ferdinand y Ysabel, King and Queen of Spain many many years ago. The entire monastery had their crest, initials, and other things all about them throughout. It was a huge, beautiful, historic building with so much detail throughout. I can't even begin to imagine how much time was put into the construction of it. This was my favorite place in Toledo because of all the detail!
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| A monkey on a toilet reading a book, ha! |
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| The Monastery |
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| Inside the Monastery |
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| So much detail! |
Next we went to el Museo Sefardí-Sinagoga del Tránsito. This place was also very cool but the Synagogue wasn't preserved as well as the monastery - it had been converted more into a museum. The few things that stuck with me about this place was that when services were held there, the men and women would be separated to eliminate distractions - men on the first floor and women on the second. Also, in one of the cases of historic things, our tour guide pointed out a knife and asked if we knew what it was for...we had no idea. It was for circumcision. EW. But the place was very pretty!
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| The main wall in the Synagogue |
Finally on the tour we went to la iglesia de Santo Tomé, where the famous painting by El Greco "El Entierro del Señor de Orgaz" is housed. Our guide spent about 30 minutes explaining the painting and it was all very interesting. No pictures were allowed of the actual painting so I bought a postcard of it.
After the guided tour we had about 2 hours for exploring Toledo on our own. We went to a small restaurant and got bocadillos y dulces (me encantan las dulces) then went souvenir shopping. Toledo is famous for its gold, knives, and swords, so a few of us bought these things. I only got a couple trinkets but it was fun wandering around the city looking at swords.
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| Some friends from ISA and I en una calle |
All in all, Toledo is a beautifully historic city in Spain that I would definitely recommend to anyone!
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