TOUR DAY ONE

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MADRID --> TOLEDO --> GRANADA

First early morning of the nine-day Insight Tour. The buffet breakfast was glorious with so much variety. The typical hot food and fruit and then we had churros, various pastries ike danishes and croissants and even mini small baguettes. We went straight onto the bus to start our ride to Granada, with the first stop at Toledo.

Toledo was the previous capital of Spain before madrid. It was a rather ancient town but very well-preserved. We first stopped just out of the city centre for a beautiful photo opportunity. We had gotten up so early in the morning, it had still been dark. And so, as the sun rose over the ancient city of Toledo, we were able to take beautiful panoramic shots of the town.

A staple in any Spanish town is the gorgeous Cathedral. Most cathedrals are constructed in the Gothic style, beautiful turrets, intricate details decorating every inch of the Cathedral. We continued down the cobbled streets of Toledo to then see the masterpeice from El Greco.

El Greco was a Greek artist who moved to Spain and was terribly popular. They couldn't pronounce his actual name (of which I cannot remember) and so just called him El Greco (the Greek).

This masterpiece is the only painting of El Greco to remain in the spot it was intended for. This was at the tomb of a man - who legend says was carried to heaven by St Steven and another saint upon his burial. It was huge and absolutely beautiful.
The painting was split into two sections. The bottom half was a depiction of the mortal, temporal world in which the man was being buried. Monks, priests and other clergymen crowded around him. El Greco's personal signature came in the form of the depiction of his son who was painted in the foregrounds.

Critics can identify this as El Greco's son indeed as a hnadkercheif placed in his pocket had the dates of his brth "embroidered." Then the Holy Trinity and a whole host of saints were depicted in the top section.

Altogether it was really quite beautiful.



Then began our immensely long drive to Granada. Granada was relatively youth-populated, a primary spot for a university and thus enhnacing the young presence on the street. That night we went for a walk around our hotel before dinner to get in some shopping. It started wtih a visit to El Cortes Ingles (one of many while in Spain) - a massive department store for Spain which has merely just opened it's first international store in Portugal.

We also witnessed some bad-ass girls slicing up massive legs of "jamon" or ham - a local delicacy apparently.

That night we had a buffet dinner at the hotel and were able to meet a few more people on our tour. Though nice and very friendly, I had truly hoped we would have some teenagers around our age in the tour group to at the very least. We were not so lucky this time around but at least we had our family friends to keep us company.

The hotel we stayed at also provided us with the opportunity to change certain channels to English audio(and damn were they good channels too with free movies and Australian shows such as Dance Academy and such.)

Despite the early morning the next day, we stayed up to watch the Princess Protection Program (ike the cool kids do) Alas! i actually understood what she was saying...a nice change to the other Spanish locals.

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