The Greek

3/7/22- Today we woke up and explored the windy streets of Toledo. We first went to the El Greco museum which displayed some of his significant pieces. My favortie pieces were called 'The Apostolados' and they were a series of paintings that depicted the apostles of Jesus Christ, as well as Jesus, with some aspect that defined their life or death. My favorite apsotle depiction was of Saint Peter as he is holding the keys to the gates of heaven. I also liked 'The Tears of Saint Peter' which depicts Peter crying becuase of guilt he felt for denying Christ. In our preambled studies of El Greco we learned that the name actually means "the Greek" becuase he was from Greece. His real name was Doménikos Theotokópoulos, I can see why people just stick to El Greco. After visiting the museum we went to a cathedral that housed 'The Burial of the Count of Orgaz', one of if not the most famous El Greco painting. In this painting we see the Count of Orgaz dead in two priests arms with a crowd surrounding them and angels, Christ, Saint Peter, and Mary in the heavens. The painting has many little deatails like Christ pointing to Peter who is holding the keys to heaven. The only person in the entire painting who is looking at the audience is a portait of El Greco himself. This is to emphasize that the audience is part of the painting as well. You can see an angel holding a baby that is ascending through clouds supposedly shaped like the birth canal to portray the re-birth of Count Orgaz into his heavenly body. We then got in our car and headed to Madrid. In Madrid we went into ___ cathedral that was beautifully painted and has the second biggest dome in all of Europe. We then got reallllyyy good soup dumplings which I had never tried before. We tried to go to the Royal Palace of Madrid but there was a HUGE line so we skipped that and went to a little food market where my mom gave each of us €5 to get whatever looked good. We got a mix of empanadas, pizza, olives, and little cheeses on bread. After the market we went and saw two different squares. Then we headed back to the dumpling place and got more dumplings, they were THAT good.