View of Toledo

Next, we visited the beautiful city of Toledo.  Toledo is in a completely different region of Spain; it is in the region Castilla de la Mancha, which for those of you who know Don Quixote is from.  It's about an hour to an hour and half away from Spain via high speed train.

Basically every street

View of Alcazar

Toledo is situated on a hill/mountain.  Basically, it's a fortress.  Here's what you see as you turn the corner and your first glimpse of the city and the Alcazar.  It's up on a hill surrounded by a river.  Secondly, it's near impossible to get around the city.  We decided to try to find our way around without a map and following the signs, which resulted in amazing views, but it was ridiculous and like a maze.  It's not a surprise that for a while the Spanish army headquarters were located here.  If anyone somehow got in, they'd struggle getting around.  Anyway, on the right, you see the Alcazar.  The Alcazar was a Roman palace in the 3rd century and then later became a fortress which went through many battles

So, since Toledo was a huge military fortress and place of power, the city is known for their craftsmanship.  This includes swords as well as ceramics.  Pretty much every shop had some sort of display looking like the one on the left.  The swords were given to each of the Spanish members of the army and are still made today for souvenir purposes.  The swords range from the ornate to basic and from daggers to full fledged long broad swords.  They had some pretty cool looking historical old pistols as well.  Their craftsmanship doesn't end there.  There were a few nice ceramic shops, but nothing that outdoes the ceramics in the south of Spain.  We stopped in a man's shop that was in his family for generations.  He had at least four or five rooms with just as complicated or more ceramics as seen below.  He hand-paints everything and not a single piece looked bad.

 
I don't think either of those were the most impressive part of Toledo.  Toledo also has the Cathedral of Saint Mary of Toledo (Front of Cathedral seen below).  This is a Catholic cathedral in Toledo since Spain is primarily Catholic.  This was built during the 13th century (1226-1493). 
 

Front of Cathedral

Bell Tower of Cathedral from courtyard (see the orange tree)

However, the most famous part of the Cathedral is the fact that the main altar is made of pure gold.  This took seven years to complete. This was probably one of the most beautiful things I've seen so far.

Main Altar

View of Cathedral from an alley

Finally, the famous painter, El Greco, spent most of his time in Toledo and is most known for his painting of the View of Toledo.  It's basically a panoramic view of Toledo.  We took a city tour bus just to get the picture and this is what we got.

Favorite Picture of Toledo

Finally, fun side note.  I bought some swords to take back home.  The security will allow you to take them on the train as long as they're covered.  So, a very nice, old lady at the train station told me this and I attempted to find a box to put the swords in.  However, no one seemed to understand how I was pronouncing the store I need, the one I was told by the lady.  The store never closes according to everyone, but I couldn't find it but was able to make a deal with some random store to get their box and tape.  I just find it weird that they're fine with it going through an x-ray machine and seeing the swords to take on, but it's not allowed to be seen...

View of Toledo:
So, my impression and view of Toledo is that, I know it's early, but I'm willing to say that it will probably be one of favorite cities in Spain that I visit.  It's just picturesque.  Everywhere I turned was something amazing and the art (swords, architecture, ceramics) they have are unbelievable.  Definitely a must if you're ever near it.