The Trip to Toledo, Spain…not Ohio

Last week was definitely what school should be for everyone every week. I got back from my Italy trip on Wednesday, so I missed all of classes that day. I went to school on Thursday, and then Friday at 6 am was our school trip to Toledo. I had a 1 day week, and it was glorious.  I really shouldn’t be blogging right now because I have test tomorrow, but like a good student I’m procrastinating a little bit more.

We were on the bus by 6:15ish and off to Toledo. Toledo was one of the first cities conquered back by the Christian king Alonso II from the moors during the Spanish ‘reconquista’ (one bad thing about learning everything in Spanish is that I don’t know what the term is in English).  I was a very crucial city from then forth for the Spanish kings.

Toledo has a very medieval environment still. A very distinct fell to it than Seville. Toledo sits on a hill, still surrounded by walls. The alleyways are all tiny and mainly consists of cobblestone streets. 

On the way to Toledo it is a school tradition to stop at these windmills right outside of Toledo. The windmills are pretty old and are no longer used. This location is in Cervantes book Don Quijote where Don Quijote thinks that the windmills are giants and fights them. Pretty interesting, they look like windmills to me.

My sister and me

Toledo is very well known for their sword makings. All of the major swords from movies such as Lord of the Rings (which that is Aragorns sword that I'm holding), 300, Gladiator, Robin Hood, Nights of the Round Table, Sword in the Stone and many more swords from movies are made in Toledo. Also, random fact, Toledo makes all of the swords for the US Marines. 

One of Toledo's best building of course was their Gothic Cathedral. This cathedral was one of the  first built and is purely Gothic architecture. They were sticklers about not taking pictures inside of the cathedral for some reason so I didn't get many pictures. I only took a few sneaky ones.

One of my sneaky photos inside the cathedral. This stain glass was to good not to take a picture of

Most of the city wall still remains intact and standing. We had some free time after seeing the cathedral to explore a little bit. This just adds to the medieval feel to the city.

Before leaving Toledo, the bus took us to this incredible look out of the city. I tried to get a panorama of the city and it came out pretty good. That being said, pictures just don't do it justice.