Holy Toledo!

For our first trip in Spain, Theresa and I decided that we would take am easy day trip to Toledo.  With classes in full-swing, the weekend definitely sneaked up on us and as we traveled by train to our destination, we realized that we had severely under-planned for our trip.  While I was the one who had originally suggested Toledo, I really just wanted to see the painting "El entierro del conde de Orgaz" by El Greco.  Other than that, I had no idea what Toledo would offer us.  As it turned out, neither did Theresa or Erik!  We decided to embrace the unknown and just wing it.                                                                                                                                                                                                               When we exited the train station, we tried to orient ourselves so that we could walk to the city center.  After wandering around for a little bit and giving up on our crappy 1 euro map, we found the first of a series of street signs that directed us in the right direction.  The first thing that we noticed about Toledo is that it is on a hill...a big hill.  Maria, our lovely host mom, warned us of this hill, but as we approached the bottom, I found it necessary to mentally prepare myself for the massive climb ahead.  Luckily for me, we took our time at the bottom of the hill because it was absolutely stunning and the perfect opportunity for some photos!  

A street in Toledo with the cathedral
in the background

As we entered through the city gate, we were immediately met with stairs...a lot of them.  Erik, Theresa and I looked at each other with a "let's do this" look and started the journey up the hill.  Once we reached the top of the stairs, we were met with ANOTHER set of stairs.  So, after catching our breath for a minute or two, we headed up the second set of stairs.  Once we reached the top of this set, we stared in disbelief at a road with an extremely steep incline.  Laughing together as we continued our climb, we finally made it to the stop and decided to make the cathedral our first stop.                                                                                                                                                                              

I don't even know where to begin when talking about Toledo's cathedral.  It was massive and beautiful and we spent almost three hours just walking around and taking everything in.  We decided to get the audio-tour which was a wonderful idea because it gave us a lot of information and let us listen to some monastic chanting as we wandering around.  At one point during our tour, Erik leaned on an unsteady lamp and almost fell on top of a granite tomb.  Theresa and I struggled to gain our composure as we were inappropriately laughing hysterically in the cathedral.

Erik and I also have this on-going tradition/joke of being unimpressed in front of impressive things.  Here is the first of many more unimpressed pictures   to come.




After some yummy food and sangria, the three of us headed to San Tome, the Church that houses "El entierro del conde de Orgaz" by El Greco.  The painting was immediately to our right when we walked through the doors of San Tome and it absolutely took my breathe away.  It was such an exciting moment to be standing in front of a painting that I have studied for so many years in my Spanish classes.  I couldn't help but take a picture of it even though we weren't supposed to!  We even got to become part of the masterpiece later in the day!

The REAL "El entierro del conde de Orgaz"

Since seeing El Greco's painting was the only "must-do" thing for us in Toledo, we decided to find a park so that we could relax and play some cards before our train back to Madrid.  I pulled out our crappy map from earlier in the day and realized that we were actually just a couple blocks away from a park!  How perfect!  Except that Toledo and I have different definitions of parks.  What we found instead of a park was a concrete plaza with a single statue in the middle.  No trees, no shade, no place to play cards.  Laughing at the ridiculousness of the "park," we decided to walk in the general direction of the train station hoping that there would be a nice shady spot to rest and play some cards on the way.

Theresa getting some ZzZ's

I guess persistence pays off because we found one!  Well, sort of.  We sort of decided to rebel against all common norms and sat on a short wall by the back entrance of a random museum.  We played some UNO together, Theresa took a nap, and I kicked Erik's butt in some random iPhone knockoff version of Yahtzee.  Even though we were quite unorthodox in choosing our place to rest, the view was spectacular!  Just look at the picture below!

Overall, it was a wonderful day and a fantastic first trip in Spain.  As to be expected, I am extremely behind in my blog posts again, so expect a couple over the next couple of days!  I've got a lot of adventures and thoughts to catch you up on!

Peace,
Sarah