Toledo, la Cuidad de la Historia

For those of you who follow me on twitter you may have already seen my tweets about this, but I literally cannot find words perfect enough to describe the city of Toledo. If I had to choose some, they would be quaint, elegant, stone, natural, perfect, historic, picturesque, and grand. Toledo is so different from American cities in that Toledo is built around nature, so that the nature enhances the beauty of the buildings and vice versa, while in the US we tend to clear and build overtop of nature. I definitely prefer the way that Toledo is built. There’s something fulfilling and good for the soul about being here. The picture below more fully represents what I mean when I say that Toledo is built into nature (sorry it’s not very clear, it was taken from the bus). Also, I feel as though I should take time to apologize in advance- the history of Toledo fascinated me, and I've recorded a lot of the historical facts that I learned during our tour in this post. I tried to make it interesting, but if you don't love history as much as I do then this might not be terribly intriguing, but I tried to include lots of pictures!

Prepare yourself: The next picture is truly the most beautiful I have ever taken. It was taken from an overlook across the river from the city, and it really shows the character of Toledo. Instead of the colors and busyness of Madrid, Toledo is built with neutral, earthy colors and makes you content to just sit and look at it and try to absorb as much of the beauty as you can. If you look carefully, you can see a rainbow to the left of the cathedral (the tall tower almost in the middle of the photo)! We were so lucky to arrive right after the rain and witness this truly once in a lifetime sight!

                               

Toledo is, as I said above, a very historic city. It has heavy influences from both the Romans and the Moors. There are still remains of a Roman aqueduct that follows the river. You can also tell that the city is older through the people. As soon as we walked through the main arch and up the first cobbled street, two old men sitting outside of a building across the street stood to take off their hats and blow us kisses as we passed. It was so adorable, as though those men belonged on a post card. The people are much more relaxed than in Madrid, and there was barely any traffic except by foot. The physical city as well as the people within it definitely fulfilled the romantic vision that I had in my head of old Spain.

                  

 

Our first stop was El Monestario de San Juan de los Reyes, or a monastery. There are even still ten monks who live there today! The monastery has many Moorish influences, as our tour guide informed us. For example, the arches that you can see in the windows in the picture of the monastery are pointed at the top instead of rounded, as they came to be in Renaissance architecture. Originally King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella (who were the reigning monarchs when Columbus founded America) wanted to be buried in this monastery. The walls of the monastery were so intricately carved! Something that I found particularly interesting was the fact that the wall carvings contained images from both Christianity and from mythology. The walls are made of limestone, which is soft enough to allow the carvings to be so intricate.






We then visited a temple next, which was curiously built by Muslims and has a Christian name. This further shows all of the different influences that have passed through Toledo throughout the years, which I think is so fascinating. Through all the change, the city has been able retain pieces of all of the cultures that it has experienced and merge them together into something beautiful.

Finally, we visited the cathedral of Toledo. This building is too grand for words. Being there brought literal tears to my eyes; I was simply overpowered by the history of the building. I could just imagine all the people who have been there before me, including the king and queen, the nobility, and just the normal citizens, and how much change the building has seen, and what all those people were thinking about when they were there. What were their lives like? What were their concerns? Were they there for religious reasons, or because they felt obligated to be?

Contained in the cathedral of Toledo were many important objects owned by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. For example, both of their crowns were there on display, as was a large figure made entirely of pure gold accented with diamonds, aquamarines, emeralds, rubies, and other jewels that belonged to Isabella. As you could imagine, this figure could not even be estimated at a price. Isabella actually ended up selling some of her jewels in order to fund Columbus' trip to what ended up being America. 

For lunch, I went with some friends to a restaurant that was recommended to us by our tour guide. It was a traditional Spanish restaurant, and it gave us our first taste of the rumored large Spanish lunch. The restaurant was located at the end of a narrow, dead-end side street and was called El Gollo. For just 12 Euro I was served a three course meal consisting of wine (of course), a large dish of pasta, potatoes and elk steak, and a warm brownie for dessert. The entire meal took us about two and a half hours to complete, which would definitely not happen in the United States. Also, waiters here do not bring you your check in restaurants unless you ask for it. This meal in particular was delicious because it was foods that I am more familiar with. Unfortunately, though not surprisingly at all, I am struggling a little with finding things to eat here in Spain. Most things are okay for one or two bites, but I haven't found anything that I like enough to really eat an entire meal of.