Spain!

We got to Spain just about a week ago, but I've been to busy to post anything in the last week. Here's a summary of my time so far, or at least of the first weekend.

When I landed in Spain, I was in Madrid. We met there as a group, and went to our hotel. We had the afternoon free, but after that we had to get together for a meeting in the evening and a quick tour of the city by bus. We saw a bunch of sites from the bus, and talked about how things work for our program, and those of us who had signed up to get cell phones got them at the end. The next day, we had a walking tour of the old part of the city, Madrid de los Austrias (named because of the Austrias, or Hapsburgs, who moved the capital from Madrid to Spain), and visited El Prado. I don´t have many pictures of that morning, because I don´t take good documentary photos and they didn't let us take pictures in El Prado.

In my free time, I mostly went to the park across the street, Retiro, which is probably the most popular park in Madrid. It was a great place. I also went to the botanical garden, which was rather sparse in flowers because it was August, but I enjoyed anyway. Here are some pictures I took in the garden.

Bonsai

The last picture is of bonsai. There was a nice selection of it, but I don't have many pictures because the background was bushes.

After our time in Madrid, we went to Toledo, which is also beautiful. We toured the cathedral and the synagogue, and I think we saw other things that I don´t remember. After the tour, we had lunch and free time, so I wandered around the streets for a bit. Toledo was the old capital of Spain, so it has a lot of beautiful and old places. Here are a couple of pictures from there:

I think this is a Roman bridge.

A view of the other side of the river. I have no idea what this is. And I also don't know why it's blurry.

Here, you can see the combination of styles (moorish and roman, I think) in the arches.

Sorry I don't have time to say more. We should be leaving in a few minutes to have a get together with Spanish students to set up speaking partners. I'll tell about school and other things when I can, probably next week. We're leaving for Aveiro, Portugal tomorrow for the weekend.