Holy Toledo

Toledo is one of the tourist capitals of Spain, and with good reason.  It’s jam-packed with churches, museums, and other cultural attractions.  But it’s also a small city, so it seems to bust at the seams even more than some of the other high volume tourist areas we had been.  The most noticeable difference was the insanity of the tour bus.  They packed the narrow streets, miraculously making the tight corners, loading and unloading herds of camera laden tourists.  Toledo is supposed to return to normalcy at night, once the buses have left but we took a day-trip from Madrid so cannot verify whether this is indeed true.

Only special people allowed!

The city is perched up atop a bluff, surrounded on three sides by the Rio Tajo, and dominated by the imposing Alcazar.  Riding a local bus up to the city, passing through the old city walls made us feel like we were traveling back in time.  The streets in general wind up, down, and around, so navigating is not easy, and can be quite tiring.  In addition, it’s all so tightly packed together that it was hard to appreciate the grandness of the Alcazar.  The funny thing, we discovered, is that the Alcazar holds the public library.  So much to the dismay of the security man who said “This is the library….” (i.e. what are you doing here?), we headed up to the café on the top floor, munched on chocolate con churros and appreciated the incredible view.

Birders pay close attention

With only a day to explore the city, we were torn between wanting to see a lot of it, and thoroughly enjoying the places we did have time to visit.  It was one of the most intense sight-seeing days of our trip, with stops at the Plaza de Zocodover, Iglesia de Santo Tome, San Juan de los Reyes and Sinagoga de Santa Maria La Blanca.  Although we don’t tend to run from one tourist spot to the next, we loved nearly every spot we ended up in Toledo.  It was a bit baffling.  We ended up doing our own things for part of the day, as Matt wanted to go-go-go, and Amber was pooped.  Ironically, we bumped into each other at the old Jewish synagogue.  But Matt rushed off to see the spectacular cathedral and Amber found a quiet plaza to enjoy a siesta.

To scare the boogeyman away

Toledo also hosted a plethora of silver filigree (swords in particular), damascene, pottery and marzipan (you name it, they make it out of or with this unique almond paste).  We tasted a bit of the local fare, but mostly soaked up as much of Toledo as we could in its rich history and incredible sights.  

Handsome gentlemen.  I need a sword!