Trip to Toledo and Madrid (el veintinueve día en España)

Trip to Toledo and Madrid

This last weekend we took our first trip organized by our program to the awesome cities of Toledo, which used to be the capital of Spain, and Madrid, which is currently the capital of Spain. Both cities were unique and beautiful. Toledo is set up on top of a hill, which put them at a major advantage in battles throughout history.J

In Toledo we took a guided tour where we visited churches, cathedrals, and various historical parts of the city. When we had some free time we enjoyed shopping around and admiring all the trinkets unique to Toledo. Toledo is particularly famous for it’s gold, and it’s swords, so they were absolutely everywhere. One of my friends actually bought 215€ sword! Crazy... I bought a letter opener that looks like a sword and a pair of cheap, but pretty gold plated earrings. I also had to buy some marzipan while I was there because I saw Rick Steves buy it in one of his travel videos and I want to be just like him :D So I did, and it was delicious.

 It pretty much tasted like cookie dough, so how could it not be. Oh! I also got to pet a pig! At dinner time we went to a restaurant where we were stuffed with an insane amount of food before our main dish even came out. I had a really tasty fish. While we ate we played one of those games that drive people insane because they have to figure something out that is basically impossible to figure out. I am not going to ruin it in the blog because I want to drive people in the U.S. insane too ;D After dinner we went to the local bar that the students in Toledo go to all the time. We learned there that Toledo may be beautiful, but there isn’t much to do their studying for a whole semester, so pretty much everyone comes to this bar every weekend. It was way to crowded for my taste, so I did not stay long at all before I asked some of my friends to go back with me. When we got back we just hung out late in one of our rooms, which was fun.

The next day we headed about and hour and a half away to Madrid. Everyone slept on the bus because we were so exhausted from the day before. In Madrid we took another guided tour throughout the city. The weather was sooo nice and we learned a lot of interesting information. We also went to the Prado, which is the art museum in Madrid with hundreds of famous works by artists like El Greco, Velasquez, Picasso, and Goya. It was really awesome to be able to see these works of art in person after having learned so much about them in school!  Usually I am not a fan of walking around art museums, but with our tour guide and these amazing paintings, it was really cool! After the museum we went to lunch at a really tasty all you can eat buffet. I was super exhausted and ended up falling asleep on the table lol. After that we headed to the Palacio Real, which is a giant palace that has been used throughout history and is still sometimes used by the king and queen today.

Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take any pictures, but it is okay because I bought a coffee table book in Spanish that has all the pictures and information I could want! After that I believe we had free time so we all went back to our hotel and took nice long naps before going out for the night. When we woke up we met up and went to a bar where you order one drink and they give you EACH a giant plate of tapas that was soooo good! We hung around there and talked for awhile and then went out to a small club that gave us two free drinks and a free hookah thing! So that was nice! After that people wanted to go to another club but I was pooped so me and Julia went back and immediately fell asleep. The next day we woke up for breakfast and got ready to take a lovely walk through the park in Madrid. We had really been looking forward to this because the leaves have changed colors in this park, so it really felt like fall J

After our nice walk we all went out separate ways and found a place to eat before hopping back on the bus to head back to Granada.

P.S. Today is the one-month mark of me being in Spain! I miss everyone!!!