After a 45-minute bus trip south from Madrid (on which we all took a nice nap) we arrived in Toledo. Our hotel, Hotel Beatriz, was awesome. The scene from our balcony was amazing. You could see everything, especially part of the city that was all walled in. During the day we got dropped off at the center of the city and got to sight see and walk around.  They had an awesome cathedral, but we didn’t go all the way in because it was 8 Euros. We did meet a really friendly man who took us on a private tour showing us how the handmade jewelry was made.

Later that night we had our match against “Bargas” Toledo, one of the top teams in the 2nd Division (Liga FEV) in Spain. We got there and warmed up right away. It definitely is a little strange to just arrive, change, jog a few laps and play. Especially after four years of college warm-ups. It took a game or two to get used to. Toledo beat us, but we did have some moments where we played well together. It was interesting to see the other teams because they are so different, everything from age, race, nationality to technique. And for subs? The other team didn’t really use them. I was amazed that everyone could pass, even the "tall" girls. When Tim told us that the style of play was different, he was right. Serving and serve receive are totally not what we expected. I’ve never seen a whole team who serves like that. We also discovered that leaving line wasn’t a good idea because every girl could literally hit every shot: Line, cross, short, tip, roll deep - they could hit them all so it took us a while to find out to block them.
 
Even though we lost, we still played four games. The crowd was pretty rowdy too considering its size. There wasn’t a lot of people, but the ones that were there were loud the entire time. There were a bunch of old men sitting behind us yelling Spanish words at us during the entire match. We couldn’t tell if they were cheering against us or yelling at us (who knows what they were saying) but it did help add some excitement to the game.

The gym was pretty small, but the floor wasn’t bad. We still haven’t played on a wood floor yet, but it wasn’t too bad of a gym. Overall it was a fun day. Sightseeing, game, then we went back to the hotel to sleep because we were leaving early in the morning to go to Cordoba. We get to stay there two days so we’re excited. Toledo was fun but you can only see so much in one day. Off to the next city...