1/25/13

Today we went into Toledo. It was about an hour and a half bus ride so that wasn’t bad at all. Before we went into the city we stopped at a spot where we could get a great picture with the city in the background. It was beautiful, with all the buildings on the hill and everything. Then we drove into the city and the tour guide gave us some information about how Toledo used to be the capital of Spain and has been around for many years. We then were dropped off and took some escaladers up the hill to the city part. That was way cool! Who knew there were escalators for that type of thing? After that we went and saw the Cathedral of Toledo. It was so big and beautiful. It was freezing inside though, with all the stone and everything. It had many chapels inside, and I thought the Choir was way cool. There was a big pipe organ above and 166 seats in the choir! Everything was so ornate and detailed it was beautiful. We then were able to see some famous paintings, some by the famous Spanish artist Greco especially. After that we went into another church that was really pretty light yellow inside with white trim I liked it a lot. There also had a great work by Greco, which he made especially for that church. Lastly, our tour guide took us to an old Synagogue that is now a museum and we were able to see the Jewish decorations that were interesting too. Then we had lunch in a nearby park and were able to walk around the shops, and there were tons. Lots of sword shops especially because Toledo is famous for their swords and metalwork because the composition of the silt and water is perfect for sword making or something like that. So the swords from The Lord of the Rings were actually made there! So that was pretty cool. There were a lot of LOTR replica swords and stuff, our director’s son got Froto’s sword ha. When we got back to Alcala we hung out at the Knapp’s house for a while. I love our group everyone is so cool I really like them!