What a wonderful Wednesday it was! We had a free morning, so we slept in a
touch, checked out, stored our luggage, and headed to the Reina Sofia to see
some masterpieces. While the Prado has
the classics, the Reina Sofia has more modern art, all produced after Picasso
was born. The big piece to see was the
Guernica, by Picasso. This he painted
after the bombing of the town Guernica, up in the north of Spain. As the kids have seen art throughout their
Spanish classes, the Spanish 3 kids all do a huge art project and many of them
had light bulb recognition moments…good stuff!
We made our way back up to Sol for some last minute shopping
& lunch. I took a group to 100
Montaditos…yep, we found one in Madrid…and as it was Wednesday, everything was
a Euro!!!! Yay!!!
We met back up with the entire group & hopped a bus to
Toledo. Toledo is a medieval town south of Madrid. It was actually Spain’s capital at one time.
As we had a free afternoon before our night train, we made arrangements with
our frantastic Tour Director to set up this excursion…and it was worth every
centavo. The hour bus ride took us to this amazing town, surrounded by walls
& the Tajo river on 3 sides, which was accurately portrayed in El Greco’s ‘Vista
de Toledo’ painting…which is where we went for our panoramic “Roamin’ Spartans”
photo. The kids were pretty excited as
they remembered the painting…and then got to see it come to life. Hashtag proud
teacher moment. Our incredible local
guide, Carlos, took us through the narrow, winding streets of this town, which
was all decorated for the Corpus Christi celebration. We toured through the 3rd largest
cathedral in the world, and learned of the 72 churches in this pueblo…Holy
Toledo! Keeping with the El Greco theme,
we got to see El Greco’s “Burial of Count Orgaz”…and take illegal selfies…cough
cough boys… Our last stop in this maze
of a town was the Jewish synagogue. Down
the hill and across the San Martin bridge, and our tour of Toledo sadly came to
an end. Two thumbs up…or actually 32
thumbs up! But, one cannot visit Toledo
without a stop at the sword/jewelry factory.
Back to Madrid we went for dinner, a bit of shopping, and
off to our night train we went. The kids
were assigned cabins in 2’s, 3’s and 4’s. After a bit of confusion, we found
all our cabins and got our luggage stowed.
Trains are a new thing for most of our kids, let alone an overnight
train. Trains are quite the common way
to travel, so it was a great experience for the kids. Got them all settled,
some with some Dramamine, and off we went.
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