April 23rd

Up early this morning and we were supposed to have a tour around the Madrid however 45,000 marathoners were using the centre of Madrid. So the change of plans was to go to Toledo, the ancient walled city that was the original capital of Spain. They moved the capital in the 16^th century. Hence the saying Holy Toledo… Toledo in is the region of Castelle De La Mancha, a Spanish Plateau 600m above sea level. Yes, this is the land of Don Quixote. I didn’t see one windmill however we did see quiet a lot of power generating wind mills.

It was great to get out in the country and it was incredible. The old city centre has changed very little since it was built. The streets are all cobbled and very narrow. The first stop off was to a sword factory. Here they make swords for Bull Fighting, West Point in America and a lot of other ceremonial swords. They also specialize in Damascus Jewelry which is a specialized jewelry inlaid with gold on iron base. It originated from the Muslims.

We then went to the old city and visited the old Jewish Town. Once again the story of the Jewish people in this area was terrible. Everyone hated them at some stage and hence they were persecuted. However at one stage was Jews, Muslims and Christians all lived and worked together in harmony. The Museum we visited was built as a synagogue on Christian land by Muslims in 1118. It is the oldest standing Synagogue in Europe. In the 14^th Century it was converted to a church and the 16^th century it was converted to a monastery and Napoleon used it as a store house in 1805 and is now a museum.

We then headed off to a little church which had a painting by El Greco. It is a pretty good claim to fame and the painting was impressive in both the composition and execution.

We then went off to the Cathedral of the town which was started in 1493 and took 200 years to build, one block at a time (LOL). It has a bell that weights 17 tonnes and the diameter of the bell is 9m. We passed on entering this Cathedral.

In the afternoon we came back to do the tour of Madrid. We saw a temple that was given to the people of Spain for their help when Egypt was building the Aswan Dam. The temple is oldest building in Madrid (2200 years old). We also saw the statue of Don Quixote. After a drive around Madrid we went to the Prado Museum to look at the development of Spanish art styles. There were so many El Greco’s and other masters we didn’t know where to look. We very quickly had art overload.