Holy Toledo!

Wednesday we all hopped on busses in Madrid bound for Toledo. Most people slept the 2ish hours to Toledo and there wasn't too much too see along the way. We pulled in and picked up our tour guides and then headed across the river and up a mountain to get a great view of the city. Historically, Toledo was situated perfectly with a river surrounding the majority of thecity making invasions very difficult, impossible actually.Toledo was the only major city in Spain that was never taken over by the Romans, mainly because they couldn't penetrate the city thanks to the river and the city walls. Undoubtedly one of the most beautiful cities I have beenin to date.

We crossed back over the river and headed to one of the oldest bridges, that is only wide enough for pedestrians and motorcycles. We crossed back over the river and headed into the city. We saw El Monestario de San Juan de Los

Reyes which has chains hanging on the outside to commemorate the Christians that were killed during the Muslim rule. We saw a couple of other cathedrals and then headed into the city center and saw the town hall with a really long line of people outside. Our tour guide casually informed us that the line was because the actual World Cup Trophy was inside! Naturally, I freaked out!! HOW COOL IS THAT!! The Trophy is on tour throughout Spain and just HAPPENS to be in the same tiny city that I am in on the same day! So all I

wanted to do was jump into line and go see it. We weren't quite finished with the tour though so we kept going. Note to self- must see the world cup!

We passed the Cathedral of Toledo, which is one of the largest and most beautiful cathedrals in Spain. We got into the center of the city and then had some free time for lunch. Hmmm, lunch or World Cup Trophy... I picked lunch at that point. A group of us headed to a tapas bar for lunch. Great tapas and a really great environment. After lunch part of our group split of to go see the World Cup, obviously! We got into line, and the line was much longer than the first

time. We got about half way through before we realized we would miss our bus if we didn't get out of line and RUN back to the meeting point.

We met the buses like we were supposed to and headed to the hotel. The second we got our room keys we ran up, dropped our bags off and headed back down to grab some cabs and head back to the city to stand in line to see the cup AGAIN. By the time we got into the cabs it had started to rain. We pull up and the line is AROUND THE BLOCK, great.... oh well, we waited anyway. It starts pouring rain, thunder, lightning, the whole deal. We figured oh well, as long as our umbrella doesn't get struck by

lightning we're good. We ended up standing in line in the rain for about an hour, completely soaking wet and then inside city hall for another 30 minutes before we got into the room where the cup was. All in all, our adventure was well worth being completely drenched and freezing cold and late to our mandatory meeting back at the hotel (oops). Who can say that they have actually touched the World Cup? I CAN!!!

After the meeting we went back into the city for some dinner at an Indian restaurant. Started raining some more and then we headed back to the hotel to hang out some more. After a while everyone was looking and feeling drained, and we had a 9 hour trip ahead of us the next morning, definitely time to head to bed. Tomorrow- Barcelona and meeting our host families!!!