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| Outside the city |
If you combine saffron, swords and
three major world religions, what do you get?
Toledo, of course! The first day
trip of the program was to this exquisite city that is just one hour outside of
Madrid. The historic part of the city is
up on top of a hill and surrounded by walls.
We went up about six escalators to reach the city from where the bus
dropped us off. Yes, there are stairs as
well, but you need all of that energy for walking up and down the hills within
the city!
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| The escalators that take you up to the city |
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| One of the gates into Toledo |
One unique
aspect of Toledo’s history is the period of convivencia, or the years during which Jews, Christians, and
Muslims all lived peacefully alongside each other. One of the most famous monuments in Toledo
that we got to visit was the synagogue, Santa Maria la Blanca. It was actually built for the Jewish
community by the Arabic community that lived there! This synagogue was later converted into a
Catholic church, then a sanatorium, then horse stables. Now, it is a museum dedicated to the Jewish
culture run by nuns…quite a history! We
also got to see a chapel with some amazing paintings by El Greco, but my
favorite site was the Grand Cathedral of Toledo. It had some beautiful stained glass, and
several pure gold artifacts that were just breathtaking.
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| Inside the synagogue |
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| Fancy sword! |
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| Marzipan mice on magdalenas |
Another specialty
of Toledo is metal-smithing…Toledo apparently is the sole provider of swords
for Hollywood. All of the swords used in
the Lord of the Rings movies were
made here! Besides the swords, they also
make beautiful jewelry with both Spanish designs of birds and flowers, and
geometric Arabic designs. As far as the
food goes, marzipan and saffron are the things to get! At one bakery, they had some adorable
marzipan mice on top of magdalenas (a pastry similar to cupcakes).
After the
visit, it was time to get started on my trabajo del campo, a 4 page paper about
the Jewish culture in Toledo, for my history class, but I can’t complain…learning
about Spanish history by going to where it happened is the way to do it!
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| You can see all of Toledo from up here! |
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