Holy Toledo, Hello Madrid, part I

Im trying out different fonts for this blog. I don't know what I think of this one, but I'm going to roll with it for now. 
So I've been debating whether or not to put both Toledo and Madrid into one blog post or not, there is so much to say about them both, therefore I have decided to cut Madrid in two parts, and It will give people reading my blog something to look forward to, hopefully; I think I'm interesting.
Toledo: This was a group trip with school, so we all piled onto our charter bus at 6:30 AM and first drove to see some windmills. Apparently, these windmills are included in the story of Don Quixote, (like Shakespeare to the Spanish) I had to have this explained to me, apparently Quixote, going a little crazy, thought that the windmills were giants and tried to fight them. 

We got back on the bus and headed the rest of the way to Toledo and went to go see the famous painting of El Greco, El entierro del senor del Orgaz in the iglesia de San Tomas. Because I am not taking Art History, (thank goodness, it seems really hard from what other students say) I got to take the short tour, and enjoy the painting for what it was, instead of trying to remember all the technicalities of the brushstrokes used by El Greco to be tested on later. We also toured the Monestario de San Juan de los Reyes, which was intended to be the burial site of los Reyes Catolicos (Ferdinand and Isabella, or rather Isabella and Ferdinand, she was more important). After this we had free time to go and explore, so of course we went shopping, which was actually good because Toledo has more artisan/ gifty type things to buy for people as souvenirs. We also tried Marzipan, I liked it, much better than my first marzipan experience. The hotel we stayed at had this amazing breakfast, which was a big deal, since breakfast in Spain is usually just toasted bread. I think I ate a peach, a kiwi, a pastry, toast with jam, and yogurt, juice and coffee. I had to savor this great food opportunity, breakfast like that never happens here, and breakfast is my favorite meal of the day. We then went and toured the main cathedral in Toledo. We kind of missed the part where we weren't supposed to take pictures inside, so before the guards reminded us to not take photos, I got a snapshot of the round stained glass window.
The cathedral was amazing, they say that it has the most treasures inside it out of all the cathedrals in Spain. The cool thing about Toledo is that the Christians, Jews, and Muslims all lived there rather peacefully, and because of this, the city was never destroyed due to attackers from other religions, and therefore much of the original city architecture is intact. The wall still surrounds the city and all of the streets wind and curve up the hill that Toledo sits on. Oh, and there are a LOT of churches in Toledo, Holy Toledo, get it? 
I'm glad that we did this group trip, it helped our group to get to know each other a little bit better. On the last day, we had a little picnic outside of the hotel and it was a lot of fun to just sit and eat with others from our group and chat, in English.
Madrid, Part I: So from Toledo Jill and I, and a bunch of others from our group headed up to Madrid on the bullet train, which was so fun, I still don't know how fast it goes. We checked into our hostel and went to explore the surrounding area in search of coffee for our friend Taylor. Madrid is a big city, I felt like it was more like New York than LA, if that helps you picture it. One of our good friends from Westmont studied in Madrid last fall and she gave us the name of a Spaniard who was one of her favorite people she met during her time in Madrid and told us we should try to meet up with him. So we made plans to meet up with Pablo that night outside at one of the metro stops to go to a party with him at one of his friends houses.... and that's where I'm going to leave Madrid. Basically I'm just waiting on Jill to send me pictures, because I didn't really take that many in Madrid, I'm not very good at remembering to take photos, but I have gotten a little better because of this blog.
"Yo te quiero si vienes o si vas, si subes y bajas y no estas seguro de lo que sientes" - Julieta Venegas, Limon y Sal.