I have just arrived back from out tour to Castilla la Mancha and Madrid. To be more specific, we first went to Toledo then Segovia, and lastly Madrid. Toledo was a really awesome city. It was quite small as far as cities go, but it was very castle-y. It is one of the oldest cities in Spain. Take a guess as to how old it is before reading on....
Sorry, you´re wrong. It´s way older than that. Toledo was founded in...Well it is unknown for sure when it was founded. It is known that it was conquered by the Romans 192 BC. Yeah, that´s before Christ! Some legends say that it was founded by Tubal the grandson of Noah. It was occupied by the Visigoths since AD 569, and was their capital of ¨Spain.¨ In AD 711 it fell into the hands of the Muslim invaders. Finally, Alfonso VI reconquired it in 1085. It remained the capital of Spain and was also a center for the catholic church in Spain. The city lost its political significance during the reign of Felipe II who lived there from 1559 to 1561. He later moved the capital to Madrid. Toledos cathedral still reamains the most important in Spain. Toledo, we found out, is also very famous for its swords, knives, battle axes, and other such things that cut. It was pretty awesome. A lot of the guys bought swords. These aren´t fake sword either. They are real live swords that could actually skewer someone! I bought a knife myself with a real fighting bull horn handle! Its really cool!
Then we went to Segovia. Segovia countryside I really liked. It had rolling grassy hills with snow topped mountains. It was awesome. The main thing that we saw in Segovia was the aquaduct. Pretty impressive thing really. Twenty-eight meters high at its highest point, which might not sound like much, but...it really is.Think about it in feet. It stretches about 17kilometers. It is all made out of granite blocks with no mortar. Cut perfectly to fit. The legend goes that there was this girl there that was really thirsty, so she made a pact with the Devil and said that she would give him her soul if he would make and aquaduct into the city before morning. So the Devil worked long and hard all night, but a few hours before dawn the girl repented of her sin and prayed that the dawn would come sooner so that she would not loose her soul. The dawn come a little bit earlier and the aquaduct still had a few blocks to go to be finished; so the girl got the aquaduct and her soul too. Anyway, that´s what the legend says.
Then we went to Madrid for three days. We went and saw quite a few attractions in Madrid, but our time there was rather leisurely. We stayed at a four star hotel in the center of Madrid that Priscilla, the ESDES secretary, said cost about a thousand dollars per room. I don´t think it was quite that much, because that sounds like an awful lot. We did way to many things to mention here, but I will say that one of the highlights for me was last night when nine of us took the metro to northern Madrid and went ice skating. That was really awesome. We are going to see if there is a rink here in Valencia so that we can go again. It is the third largest city in Spain, so I think that it is obligatory that it have an ice skating rink.
This whole trip has been really fun and I completely filled up my 1 gig card with about 800 pictures. Something like that at least. Email me if you want me to send you some.
In ending, I want to remind everyone to pray for my parents (maybe your parents too) in the Philippines. They are making a lot of progress, and for that Satan is fighting hard to keep his slaves. Even though we aren´t there we still have a responsibility to keep in praying.
Farewell, Brethren and Cistern