Weekend in Toledo!

We went to Toledo this last weekend and it was really fun! The place is so gorgeous!! We woke up early Friday morning so that we could run over to the casa de nuesrto professor and see if he needed help with his large family and getting them to the train station in time. So we left the house around 7:30 and got there to do nothing but just kinda get in the way and watch people run around their little house for a bit, and then proceeded to run to the train station along with the professor, his wife and 7 kids, along with Paige and 2 other girls from the program that went to watch the chaos too. So there were a bunch of us with backpacks, pushing strollers and dragging children through the streets of Alcalá at a rapid pace, and we barely got there in time to catch the train that we needed to take us to the OTHER train station that would take us to Toledo.
Come to find out, the other train was a bullet train, so we expressed our way to a new city (although the bullet train didn’t exactly live up to its name, it wasn’t as fast as I thought it would be, you know, like a bullet, haha). We got there and stepped out onto a platform that looked like it was from like the 1400’s or so, which was really cool because if I remember right, it actually was. We then proceeded to walk through Toledo like ducks following their mother, and got some pretty weird looks because of it while we pulled suitcases and took pictures up this huge hill for like half and hour to 45 minutes. The hotel wasn’t really easy to find, because the streets in Toledo are crazy! If you were to look at the layout, it looks like the person who was in charge of picking where the streets would go, gave a child a piece of paper and a pencil and told them to have fun, came back, and put the streets in the places that the child had drawn. There is really no rhyme or reason to the streets at all! But we finally found the hotel, were placed with our new roommates for the weekend, dropped our stuff off in the rooms and ran to the Cathedral for a tour.
This Cathedral is gorgeous! I guess its like the 3rd largest in the world or something along those lines and is very impressive to look at. We entered through the “Door of the Clock” and the name makes sense, seeing as there is a large clock over the door, and into the coldest Cathedral I have ever been in! (I say that like I’ve been in a ton, haha. But I have been in a good 2 or 3 of them!) We walked around in a group partially because we needed to so that we could hear the students that were giving the tour and partially to share body heat so that nobody left the building with hypothermia or anything. We went around and saw all the different parts of the cathedral, and one weird, kinda creepy thing is that all throughout the Cathedral there were hats of the previous arch bishops (or whatever the Catholic Church calls its leaders, I don’t remember) hanging from random places of the ceiling, and underneath where they are hanging, is where the bishop is buried. They leave the hats hanging from the ceiling till they rot off, haha! So there are random red hats hanging all over the place.
Then they set us free to walk around for a little bit before we had to be back to check into the hotel and make another appointment for a tour of a synagogue. So we walked around looking at shops, and just about every turn we made was another photo-op! These streets are beautiful! They’re just little and not very pedestrian friendly, but every one looks like a painting! The old buildings with little balconies coming out of every window with little potted plants on the balconies! Its beautiful! Needless to say I took a million pictures of the streets! Some of them are so small that you can put one hand on one building, and the other hand on the building that’s “across the street”! Later we went on a tour of a little place that used to be a synagogue for one of their kings but is now a museum, which was great, and then we were set free for the evening to roam the streets and shop and whatever. So that’s just what we did! There are tons of stores, and all of them are about the same, Toledo is famous for its swords and daggers and such, so all the stores have those, and black and gold plates and jewelry, fans and inappropriate t-shirts, haha. But I did find a clothing store that I just fell in love with because they were having a sale and there was some freakin cute stuff! So I walked out of there that night with a new pencil skirt and a shirt for pretty cheap! Like 11 Euros for the both of them! But after that, we just made our way through the maze of streets and back to the hotel to hang out there and have bonding experiences with like 25 girls crammed into one room, one boy, all sharing experiences like most embarrassing moment or worst date ever. It was nice to get to know most everyone on a more personal level. That was fun!
The next morning we woke up, ate the nice continental breakfast the hotel provided (muffins and hot chocolate) and went to the Catholic mass that started at 9. Most of us had never been and wanted to have the experience. It was really weird for me! For 1) it was in Spanish, so I had no idea what they were saying or chanting or singing, and 2), I’m not catholic, so I didn’t know what everything meant and why they kept making this weird smelling steam like stuff in something that looks like a really round, silver oil lamp that hangs from a chain that they kept swinging around while the steam poured out of it, why we had to keep standing up then sitting back down, then we would kneel, then sit again, then stand, then… who knows. It was quite unpredictable for me! And kinda awkward when they did the sacrament and a whole 3 full rows of us didn’t get up to partake (but it was wine, I’m pretty sure). It was an interesting experience to have tho!
We left a bit before it was over, well I think it was a bit before it was over, to make it back to the hotel to meet with everyone for a walk around Toledo at 10, which was probably my favorite part of the trip! All we did was walk around the walls of the city, but it was the most gorgeous walk! We started out walking over a bridge that goes over a big river (not the prettiest river, it was kinda dirty, but water is always a nice effect) then walked for a couple hours outside of the city, up some hills, and when we reached the top it was breathtaking! I was seeing the awesome sites that they put on post cards and taking amazing pictures of my own! The rest of the day was just finishing the walk around the city that ended by crossing another amazing bridge into the city and hitting just about every store that Toledo had left that we hadn’t been to yet, visiting a modern art museum that used to be another church for another ruler, and checking out of the hotel. We walked back to the train station, and found that we could have avoided the entire 45 minute very uphill walk in the beginning of the trip and replaced it with a slightly uphill, 10 minute walk, but hey, its all part of the experience!!!
That night we got home, unpacked and hit the nightlife of Alcalá, kinda. We went and got pastries with this girl named Suzi because it was her birthday. It was funny, she would walk around telling random people that it was her birthday, but she would say “Hoy es mi cumpleanos” without the “ñ” so I’m pretty sure nobody knew what she was saying. Haha! But she did successfully get a group of people in the restaurant to sing Happy Birthday to her, and then another group of kids in the street, who even went so far as to kiss her on the cheek! It was hilarious!