Toledo

Toledo

Again we woke up early. Ugh. It was hard even though we tried to sleep early the night before. And we discovered what was making JP woozy. She got vertigo from the flight and it's been really messing with her. It's not like she's totally just falling left and right, but it does make her really dizzy. But she's been powering through and she's not gonna let a little vertigo get in the way of getting her history on. This Monday's trip was to Toledo which is about an hour south of Madrid.
Toledo has been around since the Bronze Age, 3000-600 BC, but it really flourished when it was under rule by the Moors in the 8th century after the Roman Empire fell. Ironically, it was under Muslim rule that all the faiths of the God of Abraham (Jewish, Christian, Muslim) coexisted in relative peace for almost 800 years. It was called La Conviviencia (The Coexistence) where ideas, language, and thoughts were exchanged and influenced each faith. But as always, power trips, jealousy, greed, and good old fashioned superiority complexes managed to mess it up. Particularly, the Christian noble rulers wanted to regain southern Spain. So Toledo has a lot freakin' history. It's also a walled city with a grand cathedral so it's also on the UNICEF World Hertitage list.
Now Toledo was the capital of Spain after the Christian reconquest and during the Spanish golden period of 16th century. But it was moved in 1561 by Charles I, grandson of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand (who helped Columbus sail the ocean blue). Now the Catholic church, being the Catholic church, wasn't fly with that. They told Chuck, "Whatevs!", and basically continued to treat Toledo as the capital of the Catholic faith of Spain. Which they still do to this day. So the Gothic Cathedral of the city is outta control. Why? If I thought the Segovia Cathedral was ornate, this one blew it out of the water. Again, couldn't take pics inside but they had a treasury room with all the religious and royal regalia. Diamonds, rubies, emeralds, pearls, gold, silver. The alter was absurd. It was almost too much to take in. They also had the "Painting room" where world famous religious paintings of "El Greco", the Greek, are housed. Not just El Greco, but Rafael and other famous painters that I cannot recall right now. So when the Pope rolls into Spain, this is his stop. Not Madrid.

Santa María la Blanca Synagogue

Along with the Cathedral we visited the oldest known synagogue still standing in Western Europe called the Santá María la Blanca synagogue. Why the name Santa María for a synagogue? I mean that's straight up Catholic. Well, it was built as synagogue in the 10th century by Moors in the Jewish quarter of the city and after the reconquest of the Christians it was then used as a Catholic church. So the building has all the architectural and design elements of all three faiths inside the building. Very beautiful. It's no longer used as church and there is no longer a Jewish community in Toledo (the Inquisition) so the building is just protected and preserved by the Catholic church.
Once again I feel overwhelmed with all the freakin' architecture and history of this place. I mean really, who can even remember all this stuff!! I was having serious information overload and when we got to the Monestario de San Juan de los Reyes I was thinking it would totally suck to have to do a cultural resource survey of this place. The monastery was amazing. Thankfully we could take photos, but my pics cannot do it justice. But I did do a small video. Hope it doesn't make you dizzy.

We moved onto visit El Greco's museum which housed his masterpiece, The Burial of the Count of Ordaz and then the house of some famous Toledo artist that I never heard of. We had lunch as part of the tour and again I was disappointed. Seriously don't ever include the lunch if you ever do day trip tours.
After lunch we went to an artisan's shop that specializes in the art of Damasquia which is inlaying gold on metal. That was our last stop thankfully before heading back. At this point I was straight up tired. The past three days were starting to take a toll. We got back to the city center and decided to pep ourselves up with the famous San Gines Chocolate. Holy Toledo (hehe) it was delicious!!!! It was like chocolate soup. Seriously good. I mean slap yourself good. We've decided to come to San Gines everyday until we leave. Tuesday...sleep in!!!