Toledo

June 4, 2010

On Friday, June 4th, Preethi and I went to Toledo, Spain. We woke up at 5 in the morning to take the earliest train! It was our first train ride--a high speed-train that only took about 30 minutes to get us there. From the train station, we walked to the city center--Plaza de Zocodover. There were flags hanging everywhere in the plaza. The streets near the Zoco have these cool curtains hanging from the top of the buildings right about the road to block out the sun. Toledo is a tiny little Spanish town that used to be the Spanish capital. You can see the city's ties to Christians, Moors, and Jews in its architecture. Toledo is famous for their mirrors--Preethi bought a cute little one while we were there. All of the streets in Toledo are ridicuously small--they don't even look like streets! They are about as big as a sidewalk so it was a little confusing trying to find our way around the town. We were trying to find different streets to take, and the streets we were supposed to take looked like little alleys so we would just pass them. We eventually figured it out though! The good thing about getting lost in Toledo was that every time we got lost, we found a really cute area (like different parks and things) to sit at and break out the map. We went to the cathedral and walked in, found out that tourists weren't allowed in there during mass, and walked out. We came back later on though. We went to La Iglesia de Santo Tome' (a church) where Greco's masterpiece is hanging right above the tomb of one of Toledo's mayors. It was awesome! We went to Museo de Greco, but it was closed because it was being rennovated :(. We went to Museo de Sefardi' and Sinagoga del Tra'nsito, which was right next to the Greco. The museum had tonsss of cool stuff in it, like the actual outfits that the leaders of the Sephardics wore (the Sephardic are descendents of the Jews). Then we went to Monasterio de San Juan de los Reyes (Monastery of Saint John of the Kings). It was gorgeous! I felt like my camera didn't do it justice. The ceiling of the balcony outside around the square was made of all of these intricate wood designs. We went to Museo de Santa Cruz on our way out of Toledo which was fantastic! We saw a ton of Greco's work there, like the 12 apostles. We ran back to the station to catch our train and went home! Our legs were so sore that night from walking up and down all of the hilly, cobble-stone streets of Toledo (and running through them to catch our train). We didn't realize how much more our legs were going to hurt after our trip to Segovia the following day...