Toledo

 Last night as we were eating some snacks and working on a bottle of wine Caro took a look at the rules of the hotel which stated “absolutely no food or drink in the room”. To our recollection we have never been in a hotel that had this rule, so we ‘broke” it and continued enjoying our wine and snacks! 

There appeared to be automatic room cleaning so we put the remaining food in our back packs to hide it and took our garbage out with us this morning!

Here is a photo of part of the hotel

Check out the beams 

This is the street where the taxi drove down to let us off at the hotel gate.

We walked for about an hour all over.

About 10:45 AM we went to the cathedral for our pre-purchased timed entry. Considered the finest gothic cathedral in Spain,it is smaller (but taller) than the one in Seville.

The following is a pano shot of the “Choir” section

The chairs in the above photo are amazing. Each of them is different and were made by master craftsman back in the 1300’s (I believe)

The cathedral also has MANY religious artifacts including paintings. The first photo is a master from the renaissance called Titian (1488-1576). A painting about this size sold in 2024 for about $C 33,000,000.

The next painting is by Caravaggio (1571-1610). His paintings almost never come up for sale as they are in museums or owned by the church. One estimate I read was that IF a Caravaggio came up for sale it would go for $C 160,000,000-241,000,000.

Anyway there were MANY master paintings in there.

After completing the cathedral we went to the Alcazar (fortress) and spent a bit of time looking at Spanish army and navy history

We had a 2PM walking tour. There were eleven tourists there (India,Columbia, Venezuelan United States and us). It was a nice tour with good stories and it gave us ideas for tomorrow (we really should have only stayed here two nights).

The building above still has the bullet holes from the Spanish civil war (1936-39)

We were pretty tired at the end of the tour so after stopping for something to drink we worked our way back towards our hotel, stopping for a delicious light supper at a place six or seven minutes away.

Back at the hotel we are relaxing and breaking hotel rules again by working our way through a bottle of wine and snacking.

Edit:  We knew there was a high point in the hotel but we couldn’t seem to access it so we found one of the workers who then let us in to an unrented room which had a stairway up to the top viewpoint

Toledo

 On our way to Toledo

We were up early enough to go to breakfast at the same restaurant as yesterday. 

Back at the hotel we finished packing,then started walking up to the train station ( 10 minutes away ).

We arrived about 10 minutes before our platform number was called for the first leg of our trip. Good timing on our part. 

This time we are on an IRYO train to Madrid with one stop in Cordoba. 

Immediately north of Cordoba we went through a beautiful mountainous area. According to Chat GPT it is called Sierra Morena and “is characterized by rolling hills, wooded valleys, cork and holm oak forests and small mountainous villages”.

The landscape changed as we got closer to Madrid, becoming flatter. 

The black area above the green trees is actually a massive solar farm.

We arrived three hours later, about 20 minutes late (noon) into Madrid Atocha station which was OK for us as there was less time to stand around waiting for our 1:45 train to Toledo. The train this morning wasn’t very full but the one to Toledo was packed. 

Arriving in Toledo ( about 30 minutes later) there was no way we were walking into the old town (too hilly).We grabbed a taxi and it was worth the $C20 it cost.

Our hotel is an old restored house (with sections dating about a thousand years old). The photo below is the entrance

After unloading our stuff we walked into the old town to see what there was, and to find a restaurant. We would be totally lost if not for Google Maps. Honestly it has been a godsend for us.

We found an interesting restaurant and ordered local delicacies such as a meal of a partridge and a plate of paella. It was very expensive by our standards but it was part of learning the local culture.

Yup,  that is the type of bird we ate.

We just walked around the streets trying to get our bearings which is really tough in this ancient medieval city. Below are some random street/building photos.

The following photo is the street immediately in front of the gate to this house. The taxi had to wind its way all around the old part of this hill top city just to get us here. Some of the streets are incredibly narrow and there are always people walking on them (like us) so drivers have to be aware and so do we as we have to be able to move aside every time a vehicle or motorbike comes along.

A view from our bedroom

A screen shot of where we are now.

The cathedral in Seville

 We started out this morning down the street at a restaurant for croissants and tea/coffee. 

We waited a while before leaving for the tram. We had put on pants today as it was going to be “only” 28 degrees. However, upon arrival at the tram station I decided to go back to the hotel and change into my cutoffs. This gave Caro some shopping time (souvenirs of course) and 20 minutes later we were on our way.

We got off near the cathedral and just started walking the streets. There are so many beautiful buildings here.

We had decided to go across the river to see another part of the city that is newer but still beautiful (the district is called Tirana).

We walked and walked, and walked some more, enjoying the scenery. We had tickets for the cathedral at 4:45 PM so we had plenty of time to fill with sight seeing.

The weather forecast for today was cloudy with a 25% chance of rain at 11 AM so we knew we were OK not taking our umbrella’s. Oops!! At 3 PM it poured for quite a while. We just stayed in stores or under covered areas like everybody else.

As we were having a beer (just to keep out of the weather) I realized our tickets for the cathedral were actually for tomorrow. SH@T!! Panic  time!!

We decided to play the Dumb Tourists and got in line for the 4:45 tour. Unfortunately the ticket fellow caught the mistake and wouldn’t let us in anyway, directing us around the cathedral to other side to the ticket office. 

Once there we stood in line with other people waiting to get the very limited amount of tickets that are  released every 30 minutes (at least that was my understanding). Caro explained our situation to one of the guards and she (Caro) said we would be willing to purchase new tickets because we wanted to see the cathedral and we were leaving the city in the morning, The guard took us aside to the ticket office boss and after an explanation from us and showing her our train tickets for tomorrow she spoke to some entry people and our tickets for tomorrow were approved for today!!!!  WHEW.

We climbed the bell tower and took a few photos.

The cathedral is MAGNIFICENT. Stunningly beautiful! The photos below do not do it justice.

The following two photos are the grave and monument of Christopher Columbus.

The cathedral was many stained glass windows

This photo is looking straight up at a dome roof

Here are some miscellaneous items I took photos of (there are MANY things here)

That painting is from 1547.

The building is so big with nooks and crannies all over, so I am quite sure we missed some parts.

About two hours later we were done and were eating a light supper at a nearby restaurant (Taverna) that was established in 1386

Some of the supper doesn’t look appetizing but it all tasted great

26,900 steps showing on my phone today,  the highest amount for this trip.