This is the first weekend (fin de semana is Spanish for weekend) that I have spent in Toledo. Normally in the UK I look forward to the weekends because I don't have to work, but here I would prefer to have class everyday! Apart from my host family, I don't know anyone in Toledo so I have had to do a lot of stuff by myself.

The first thing I did yesterday morning, after a very light breakfast, was to visit a museum - 'Museo de Santa Cruz'. The museum was free, and was in an old building close to the main square of the city. I did the top floor first - it had a few bits of old pottery, but was mainly full of old religious paintings. I actually quite like looking at the old paintings because the contents are quite interesting. A lot of them are quite gory, for example pictures of saints with arrows sticking out of their bodies and lots of blood everywhere. It's also interesting to see what the people in the paintings are wearing, and to look at their facial expressions and the what they are doing to each other.

The lower floor contained an exhibition of modern art by a painter that was alive in the 20th century. Most of paintings here weren't interesting to me.

Museo de Santa Cruz

After the museum, I moved onto the cathedral. When you are outside the city you can clearly see the cathedral because it is huge, but inside Toledo it is difficult to see until you are quite close because the streets are very narrow and most of the buildings are quite tall (at least compared to England). The cathedral cost €7,00 to enter and was quite impressive on the inside. It's quite a big cathedral, I think slightly bigger than Ely cathedral which is close to where I live. There was no tower to climb up (or at least I could find it) but there were a few different rooms leading off of the main part of the cathedral with different exhibitions in them.

One room had the walls and ceiling painted - the walls showed the story of the birth and resurrection of Christ, and the ceiling had a depiction of heaven. One of the walls was really cool because it had a picture of Jesus and the Virgin Mary at the top in heaven, and below them it had hell, with lots of people being dragged off by demons and lots of blood. Unfortunately I was unable to take pictures inside the cathedral.

This is the view up one of the main streets leading up to the cathedral

The cathedral is huge and it was difficult to get the whole thing in the shot!

The previous day I had sent an email to Isabel, my Spanish teacher that I used have lessons with in England. When I returned at lunch time I was excited to find quite a long reply waiting for me in Spanish, and I understood every word if it, so I think my Spanish is definitely improving! Isabel said she read this blog too and we are going to meet up for a beer when I return to Cambridge.

For lunch I had a salad followed by marinated pork and then some watermelon. I don't know why but I like to document my meals!

In the afternoon I didn't really do a lot - I had a sleep and then watched TV with the family. In the evening the family went out for a birthday party so I did the other walk around the outside of Toledo, inside of the river. The views were not as impressive, but it was much greener and cooler (cool as in temperature) because of all of the trees.

There was a lot more shade on this route due to the vegetation

View across the river

This bit was like a jungle!

The route ended at the Puente de San Martin

After walking around I was thirsty and hungry so I sat outside a bar and had dinner. The waiters all seemed a bit miserable though so I moved on and had a few beers in a little square near the language school.

I returned to the house shortly after the family returned, and I sat with Charo and watched some Spanish reality TV with her. To me, Spanish TV seems more like American TV than English TV. There are a lot of chat shows and the reality show that I watched has a lot of interviews. It also seems that people are always either shouting or crying and everyone likes to talk at the same time!

This morning after breakfast, I left the house and took some books with me so that I could find somewhere nice to sit and do my homework, but in the end I didn't do it.

First of all I went the main square and had a coffee with ice, and watched a very strange man annoying passers by. Then I walked to the other side of the city and found somewhere to have lunch. I was looking for a little park that Veronica had described to me but I couldn't find it and eventually just stopped somewhere to eat.

On Sundays there is no lunch with the family so I had a menu del dia outside a restaurant which is an inexpensive 3 course meal. There was an Italian couple sitting on the table next to me, and when they left I asked the waiter if he could understand anything that they had said. He said although the languages have a few words in common he couldn't really understand them because they spoke no Spanish at all. He seemed pretty surprised that I could say something other than "1 beer please" like most English tourists!

View from outside the restaurant

From the restaurant I could see the Puerta Cambrón which is one of the many city gates in Toledo. There are quite a few city gates because they kept adding more layers of city walls as the city expanded.

After eating I returned home for a siesta...

A shaded path back home