Last day in Toledo

We started off the day getting a light breakfast while we waited for the Monastery of San Juan to open. It is a gorgeous monastery with a beautiful church and lots of history. It was commissioned about 1477 by Isabel La Católica (of Columbus fame). In Spain she was incredibly important for starting MANY of the religious buildings. It is thought that she and her husband King Ferdinand were to be buried here but after the Spanish finally defeated the last of the Muslims in Spain in 1492 they preferred to be buried in Granada. 

Just down the hill from the monastery is the San Martin bridge. Built in the 14th century it has beautiful views of the city. 

Next stop was the Convent de Santo Domingo el Antiguo. Initially I was not impressed ( we have seen “so” many churches) however this place is the burial location of the famous painter El Greco. More importantly for me it had a collection of VERY old letters

From 1309!

From the King in 1254!

Same document in both photos. I just wanted the date to be included (1150 AD)

By now we needed a break (12:30 PM) so our next stop was right in front of our hotel ( the right hand side of the narrow street in previous days photos). It is a now a restored cultural museum that used to be a church /mosque etc. It has lots of things from the Visigoth era ( from about 507 to 711 AD). 

The cross and the coins are from about 620AD

After an hour of relaxing we went to the Church of Jesuits, which by itself is not much to look at after seeing all the tremendous churches here. The difference is that church has stairways up to the tower where you have nice views of the city. 

After a refreshment break we went to an ancient synagogue which later was a church, then a jail, then a couple of other things that I can’t remember. It had some nice ceilings.  

Caro was humming and hawing over some jewelry pieces that she couldn’t decide on. I solved the issue as her birthday is coming up next week!

Supper was really great. We walked about 10 minutes to nearby the first Monastery we went to first today. The dessert was very tasty!

Just before 8 PM we went out to see the lights and the night life, We were surprised to see there weren’t nearly as many people as we thought there would be. In the daytime some of the plazas are full of people so we assume these are day trippers from Madrid. Tonight there were always people around but no action anywhere.