Advertisement
Published: August 31st 2011
Photo 2
On the way to El Escorial. Beautiful mountains everywhere!!!Hola! We left Spain this morning to take a bus to El Escorial. It took about an hour to get there and it was worth the drive. We went to the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo del Escorial, which was constructed between 1563-1584. It was beautiful and our tour guide had a beautiful accent. I learned so much about the history of the royal families in Spain. It was extremely interesting, and a lot easier to retain in person than when I read it out of a book. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but my favorite rooms were the burial room, the church, and the library. Some of the books in the library were over 1500 years old!
After we left the Monastery, we took the bus to Toledo and checked into our hotel. Toledo is one of the most beautiful places i've ever seen and has a rich history because it was the first capital of Spain under the Visigoths. We went to the biggest and most exquisite Cathedrals that I have ever seen. We also saw the Church of Santo Tome, and the Barrio Judio which included the Santa Maria La Blanca synagogue. The tour of
the city took about 3 hours, but it was worth it. The tour guide has an accent that was the most difficult for me to understand this far, but I still understood most of what she was explaining about the history. Toledo is known for the mixture of Jewish, Moorish and Christian cultural influence. For years the reign of power was constantly shifting between these 3 groups, but in the end religious tolerance was learned and resulted in one of the most beautiful cities in Europe.
P.S. Our tour guide looked like my neighbor Kim, which made me feel like home was close by. It was nice because I was feeling a tad homesick for Briana yesterday. That's all the time I have for now, I will try to update you all tomorrow after I meet my host family!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.044s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 7; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0243s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
