Our wake up call at 7:15 am was not welcomed at all; mostly because I was the one sleeping next to the phone. I jumped out of bed and got ready for our excursion to Toledo, a small city about an hour away from Madrid. Our tour guide jumped on our bus and pointed out famous buildings and gave us some history about the city. Formerly occupied by Arabs and Christians, the city has A LOT of churches and converted monasteries, with Arabic design elements. The city has a lot of inclines so I definitely got a great work out! We also took a tour of the cathedral, which had over 40 altars, some original 1000-year-old stained glass windows, paintings, sculptures, smaller chapels where they held wedding ceremonies, and even a crypt. They also had some rooms with artifacts featuring a holder for communion made of 16 kilos of solid gold that would be processed in for mass. (It’s only the middle portion in the picture.) One of my favorite paintings in the church is of Jesus after he is taking down off the cross. Instead of the artist painting blood or open wounds, they emphasized the pain that Jesus felt in his heart by having his right hand lightly placed over it. This cathedral had a crazy amount of gold! During the Napoleonic Wars and the Spanish Civil War, they had to hide all the gold to prevent it from being stolen. The holder for communion had all 12,000 of its screw able parts dismantled and hidden. The gold railings were masked with black shoe shine, which when rubbed off later took some of the gold with it.
P.S. Don't forget to read part 2!
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