Returning to where it all began

Oh my goodness has this past week been a whirl wind.  Sorry to all of you for not posting earlier, but I still have photos to sift through and I'm trying to journal for myself everything that I did, including all the little things. So it's very hard to keep up with everything in two places.  But here I am finally, back from my week of traveling around Spain.

Tuesday I left for Madrid at around 9 A.M.  Me and my roommate woke up around 7 and headed out for the bus stop.  Our senora also made us a huge bocadilla!  I don't have a picture of it, but it looks just like all the rest of them I have.  Except this one also had the best breakfast croissants in the world.  It had chocolate in the middle with sprinkles on top and it was literally one of the best things I've ever had.  The best part is that the hotel we stayed at also had those croissant things!  Everyone ate them, at least one or two every day, including myself.

The first place we headed to from Madrid was Toledo.  Toledo is absolutely gorgeous.  El Greco has a famous piece that he did of the city of Toledo, which is apparently how in New York.  El Greco means "The Greek", he has a real name, but it's very long and hard to remember, so the people named him "El Greco".  The stories go that when he arrived in Toldeo he say the view and decided he needed to stay there.  So he painted the city and stayed there to do many other paintings.  When we first arrived in Toldeo we stopped at a spot best for viewing the city and got to take a bunch of pictures of the city from afar.  So here's me!! and the beautiful view of the city.  I loved Toledo.  After we stopped over the impasse to look at the city from afar we drove down into the city to check out the beautiful cathedral in Toledo.  It's very big and very pretty, and inside is one of El Greco's famous pieces.

 First things first, Toledo is known as the city of the 3 religions, Christianity, Judiams, and Islam.  So we got to visit places that represent all three of the religions.  The Cathedral of Toledo was first up and it was huge. The first thing we walked in to see was a huge altar space with a really big and beautiful piece of gilded wood working and sculptures.  When we walked in our guide immediately pulled us over to the side and gave us some history, for example the main alter, which is what we were looking at, faces the East and the whole piece behind the alter represents Jesus' life, birth, life and death.  So this is the picture of the piece on the right, it was even more breathtaking in real life and up close.  After we looked at the big piece walked out to the hallway and looked at this really cool window.  This window was made by 2 brothers and took 11 years to create.  It's made all of marble imported from Italy, so you can imagine the amount of time it took for it to get all the way over here to Spain.  Our guide told us lots of funny stories and used funny phrases the whole time.  When he asked us why we thought they created the ornate window we didn't know, he then followed it up with "they built it for light" haha of course, why not just create one of the most ornate things simply for the sake of light, that makes a lot of sense.  

After we looked at the window he brought us to a cool statue that depicts how this church, and Toledo in general has all three religions in one place.  The sculpture is a sculpture of Mary and Jesus, and while it looks like it only represents Christianity, the floor below the sculpture is full of the Star of David, and on both sides of the sculpture is scenes of King David.  Then around the walls on the Cathedral you can see Islamic designed walls.  It's really cool to see that and see how they incorporated everything into the church.

Finally we got to see the famous "El Greco" piece that they have in the cathedral.  And...we could take pictures of it, yup, I took a picture.  It's a big piece of the disrobing of Jesus before he was crucified.  The piece is also, ironically, in the sacristy, where the priests get dressed, and the room is huge.  So while the priests were getting ready, they got to look at this amazing piece by El Greco.  We also to learn a little bit about how he painted, for example, El Greco hated men's hands, he didn't like the way they looked, so he used his wife's hands for every hand he drew, including mens'.  So they are all elongated and feminine looking, he also used his wife's face to paint Mary.  So all his hands look weird, and some of them even have some inconsistencies.  LIke in this piece one of the guards looks like a Spanish conquistador instead of being dressed in the right period clothing.  Also, there's a little piece of paper on the bottom of the picture, that he used to sign his name. Above the ceiling of the whole sacristy there's a huge fresco and the guy only created it in less than a year.  It's huge and so cool.  The guide also showed us this really cool thing, where from one angle the angel looks like it's facing one direction, but from another it is facing a different direction.  It was really cool and looked like it was following us.  The term they use for this "trapaojos" (trick of the eyes).
After we got to see the cool Greco piece we walked down the street to see another piece by El Greco, what is apparently considered one of Greco's best pieces, besides the painting of Toledo of course.  That place had a ton of security and there were no pictures allowed.  The piece we got to see was the ascension and burial of some Lord of Spain a long time ago.  It was really cool to see the piece and we learned that it's essentially a family portrait, or rather he hid a family portrait in there. haha  His wife is one of the women, he's in the back as a priest and his son is a little alter boy.  I felt really honored to get to stand in front of some of these pieces because they are such historical pieces.  Also, outside of the museum area there was a protest going on for something and it was pretty cool to see it.  There's protests going on all over Spain for workers rights, it's very cool, but obviously very good that they are upset.  But I don't know much about the local economy so I'm not sure what's what.

After we were done looking at all of that cool stuff we continued onto Madrid for the night.  We got into Madrid around 5ish at night and were let go to have a free night in the city.  They dropped us off at our hotel and weren't due back until 1 the next day.  But that's for a new blog, don't want these getting too long.  But that's essentially my first day of my journey.  There's plenty more blogs coming!

Until then, love you all.

Oh yea, I found these pictures and I like them.  The first one is just  me on the bridge overlooking Toledo.  The second is me with a suit of armor!! I forgot, we went to a place where they make metal things, mostly jewelry, we saw how the melt them, bend them, and then paint them.  Then we got to hang around the place and look at expensive swords to "buy" or rather to take pictures with. :P We're such tourists.