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Day 3: June 18, 2016
Sheri's group started the day by going to Toledo. We drove to the south of Madrid to visit that medieval city. On arrival we met our guide Fernando and went to the other side of the river to see the city from above, we enjoyed terrific views from that spot! We then went into the city as such and left the bus and started our walking tour of the city. We stopped to visit its old and magnificent cathedral, so impressive indeed. We then moved on to see El Greco's masterpiece: the burial of Mr Orgaz, a very interesting piece of art too. After that we walked along the narrow streets of the former Jewish district of town and stopped to see its oldest synagogue. We then went to a factory or workshop where they make the crafts of Toledo and after some explanation about the technique called Damasquinado, we had the chance to shop for a while. We returned to Madrid and after some time for lunch, we reunited with Lisa's group and started with our guided city tour of Madrid with Rolando and our local guide Susana. We started with the visit to the Royal Palace and visited it, seeing its unique and valuable collection of tapestries, paintings, furniture, among other details. After that we were taken around the city showing us some of its highlights. We stopped to see the famous bullring called Las Ventas, a very big an interesting construction from 1929. We continued to drive around the city seeing some other areas like the district of the nice and expensive stores, Salamanca. We stopped to see the Bernabeu stadium house of Real Madrid soccer team. We drove along the nice and famous Gran Via, full of movie theaters, stores, hotels among other places. We stopped at Plaza de Espana to see the monument to Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, the masterpiece of Spanish literature. After we finished, we went to another nice restaurant and enjoyed a very nice Tapas' dinner. We returned to the hotel.