La ciudad de Toledo (espadas y dagas)

WOW! I have not been keeping up with this at all!! Our trip to Toledo was...oh about a month ago (plus some). But, seeing as I'm giving a presentation on my personal experience in visiting Toledo, I should be fairly good with details (I think...)



So...TOLEDO!! It was the weekend of March 20th and I reaaally like the city. As you can see from the pictures, it was basically something from out of a Lord of the Rings book. We got there Friday afternoon/evening, grabbed something to eat quickly, and then took a little tour of the city. It has such an ancient/historic feel to it with the narrow pathways made of stone and the castle-like buildings. We walked around to see the places we would visit the next day. Then we returned to our castle (first picture) where we slept. Do you see the top windows in that tower? Yeah, that was our room - it was awesome!



The next day we trecked up the giant hill into the city (as seen in the second picture). Our first visit was el Museo de Santa Cruz (picture three) which had once been a hospital, but was now converted into a museum. We took a while in there (the museum part of it was giant!) and after that, we chose to go see the Greco exhibit.

I REALLY liked the Greco exhibit. I really liked his style of painting and the colors he used. It was very dark, but yet very bright at the same time. It was really interesting to see (the fourth picture is from the exhibit). Then a small group of us went to see a master swordsman who our professor knew because he had bought one of his swords earlier. It was really cool! The swordsmith still made weapons the old way and took us 'behind the scenes' to see how they were made. You can seem some of the swords in the next picture. They weren't all fancy and decorative, but they were real (balanced and everything!). After that we grabbed lunch at a tapas place.

Then we met up with more people and found a really cool lookout spot right by the Alcazar (sixth picture) complete with cement lounging/tanning blocks and then ate some of the mazapan (marzapan) that we bought. It's one of Toledo's famous things (Toledo's know for swords and marzapan) and I liked it.

The rest of the day was wandering around. We saw the cathedral (picture 7) and listened to all the accordian players playing in the streets. We went to a Sinagogue/Sefardie museum and then ate dinner and returned to the hostel/castle.

The next day, bright and early, we went to see el Greco's famous "El entierro del Sr. de Orgaz" (which is something like the burrial of Mr. Orgaz, ha). I was blown away! It was giant and really cool, but unfortunately we couldn't take pictures, so I settled on just getting a postcard of it. Our professor explained all the parts of it and it was really interesting.

Then we got to go see the museum of torture, which was interesting, but also kinda sickening. They were instruments used during the inquisition to basically give the person as much pain as possible without killing them.

The second to last picture is of the 'iron virgin' where they put the person in there and were able to adjust the spikes in such a way that they would go through your skin, but not hit any vital organs. Lovely. And they had a whole bunch for removing any part of the body (take your pick) in the most painful way.

And that was the last main stop on our trip, but I don't want to leave you with that gross section, so I added a picture (one of my favorites I've taken so far) of the city from a side view. As you can see, it's very storybookesque. And that's Toledo. Hopefully I'll be able to catch up a little more soon, but school is very busy - we'll see. Until next time.