Toledo and Madrid

This weekend my group went to Toledo and Madrid on a trip our program organized. We left on Saturday, spent the day in Toledo, then drove to Madrid, spent the next day there and came back to Salamanca. It was a whirlwind trip and we saw a lot of churches and museums. I was exhausted the entire time but it was pretty cool to travel around and see new things. I took tons of pictures during the trip but unfortunately I will only be able to show you a few of them because I don't want this post to get too long and it also takes awhile to upload pictures for the blog.

So we left Salamanca at 7am. I was not too happy about waking up at 5:30, but it meant we were in Toledo by about 10am. Here are some pictures of our first glimpse of the city. Soooo beautiful.

Once we were in the city itself, we toured a few churches and saw some art. Then we had free time for lunch and shopping. Then after that, we toured the most beautiful cathedral I have ever seen, but we weren't allowed to take ANY pictures inside!! I was so disappointed! I feel like I'm already starting to forget how absolutely incredible it was, and I really wish I had pictures to remind me. Here are some pictures of the outside though.

After that, we got back on the bus, drove to Madrid and went to our hotel, and then had the evening to do what we wanted. One of the girls in my group has a friend in Madrid, so a bunch of us hung out with him and some of his friends. They were all really nice and it was great because I got to practice Spanish with them, even though some of them wanted to practice English too. The only problem was I stayed up way later than I meant to and only got about 4 hours of sleep before we had to start our day in Madrid. We went to the Prado Museum and the Reina Sofia Museum in the morning, and then after lunch we took a walking tour of various sites. I didn't enjoy the day in Madrid as much as Toledo though, because I'm not a huge fan of art museums and during the walking tour I was so exhausted and cold that I just wanted to sit down somewhere warm. Here are some pictures of what we saw in any case. I wish I could remember what everything is but we saw so much that I can't keep it straight.

Prado Museum

 Reina Sofia Museum

 Madrid's Plaza Mayor

 A really pretty church that I can't remember the name of

 The Palace (next to the church)

 Kilometer Zero

After our walking tour we got back on the bus and came back to Salamanca. We were all exhausted by this point and most of us fell asleep on the bus. The weather had gotten really bad by this point and we had to walk home in the wind and a little bit of rain. Needless to say I was very happy to get into bed that night haha.

I guess that's it for now, this post has gotten pretty long. I'm thinking about trying to post all of the pictures somewhere so that everyone can see them, but I don't know where to do that. I have them posted on facebook but that's not publicly accessible. Any suggestions for a website where I can upload pictures?