Yesturday we speant ALL day in the ancient city of Toledo. It was about an hour south of Madrid and was absolutely AMAZING!!! The architecture was of gothic decent and also had many castle looking buildings. So gorgeous!! We first took a panoramic bus tour of the city but so many of the streets were very small so we also took a walking tour. We saw an ancient sinogogue that was built by muslims so the architecture looked almost like Alladin. We saw the church of St. Tomas in which there wa sa wedding so we did not have much time in the actual church to explore. The courtyard around the church was extravagent and had a beautiful garden with orange trees and big gorgeous flower bushes. We then took a break in a bar ordered a water and went to the bathroom. We continued walking (mostly up hill) and through little streets and we went into a smaller church that contained "El Greco's" most famous and well known painting called The Funeral. It was absolutely beautiful. El Greco used to live in Toledo so this painting was the original still on the wall of this itsy bitsy church. It was amazing. After this we walked to the second largest cathedral in Spain, absolutely gorgeous. It was huge and towered way over everything in Toledo. The last super along with many other historic figures and gargoyles were carvered into this ancient and beautiful cathedral. After seeing that gorgeous land mark, we all met in the main plaza. We broke for lunch and ate at an italian restaurant. 5 girls split spinach tortellini, a sausage pizza, and PAELLA! My very first paella, which is a traditional spanish meal. It consisted of flavoresome rice, chicken, these HUGE bean things, and 2 different kinds of peppers. Absolutely delicious. We then did some shopping and got some ice cream. We took the bus back to our hotel; Hotel Beatriz. What an elegant and beautiful hotel. Ellysia and I shared a room with a humorous girl named Kelly. The 4 girls went down to the lobby to eat dinner. We had a round of champagne which was accompanied by chips.. how NOT very european.. At 9 pm when the buffet opened we ventured into the other room and sat down. What we thought was going to be super cheap ended up being 27 euros EACH... holy canoli... It reminded me of country club food but espana style. It was extravagent and delicious. I enjoyed the white fish, and also the chocolate covered strawberries. Yummm. We were offered a free round of beer, which tasted absolutely AWFUL. Spain knows wine... but beer is a different story.. blefhgh.
We then were jsut wandering and exploring...avoiding censors of course.. pretending we could go in the pool but it was closed.. sad day. We searched for internet all night but couldnt get it.. so we went and had a glass of wine at the bar downstairs. That made us extremely tired so we went back planning on sleeping
Then I check the internet and it was working... oy ve. I talked to my boo for a long time and it was wonderful end to a fabulous day : ]. Goodnight Toldeo!!
Woke up this morning and had breakfast in the same spot we had our extravagent dinner. I found this AMAZING yogurt that I love. Its Dannon Coco.. so damn good. Had that a pastry, pineapple juice, and a hard bolied egg.
Got on the bus at 9 headed for Sevilla. YAY!!! I slept for the first hour, and then the next 2 hours after that too. We stopped in the middle of NO WHERE, where appaently Don Quijote was based out of. We stopped at a cafeteria that could fit like all 130 of us. Disgusting food end of story, but got batteries for camera finally!! Yayy.
We arrived in Sevilla around 5:30. We met our host mom Sandra, who is everything Id hoped shed be. She is so nice and so welcoming. Did I mention gorgeous?! Her home is located on this small street. It is a very large apartment with YELLOW otlinging aroudn the windows, how perfect is that? She has a large living room with HUGE beautiful paintings all over her house. Her two daughters both live and work in Madrid, we met them very quickly as they had to leave to catch the train back to Madrid. We also met her nighbor, cant remember his name but he was funny. My spanish speaking has been going SO well so far. Ive understood everything theyve said even with their accents and cut off words. The language is beautiful, I want to learn to speak the language just the way they do. I will by the end of this session.
We has dinner tonight it was flattened chicken that was marinated in salt, pepper, and olive oil. (they use olive oil on EVERYTHING literally... like toast, sandwichs, EVERYTHING.) The chicken also had almonds on top, sooo delicious and savory. She also served a green bean cassorole with salsa mixed in. Salsa meaning olive oil, salt, pepper, and some little bits of something I dont know what it was. We ate jsut ellysia and I. She informed us that food would jsut be out and you can heat it up when you are hungry, they dont really eat together.
Tomorrow she offered to drive us to la plaza nueva where we will be meeting ISA, so that we can get an idea of where we will be walking. We are taking our spanish placement test tomorrow mroning and picking our classes! Wish me luck!
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