Toledo

I arrived to Toledo after a painful exchange at the Madrid train stations. I arrived at the north Madrid train station and needed to get to the south one. No problem, I thought foolishly, I’ll just take the metro. Bad decision: I felt like one of those commuter trains in Japan with people crammed in. It was an unpleasant 30 minutes. 

After some confusion at the south train station (signage, people!!), I successfully arrived in Toledo. My first inclination that I was in a different part of Spain was the Arabic design of the train station. The second was the oppressive heat that slapped me across the face when I exited the train. It was in the upper 90s, way hotter than the temps I was used to in Santiago. I quickly made the decision to get a ride to the hotel instead of walking.

Toledo the town

The part of Toledo I was going to be in was on top of a hill. The streets were narrow and cobblestoned and the buildings were tall, creating alleyways and rabbit warrens everywhere. Around the Toledo Cathedral they had hung sheets of fabric between the buildings over the streets. It was pretty, and they did it to provide shade below. I have seen this in a couple other cities and it is an ill-omen that heat is coming for me in that town.

Places

Since I was using Toledo as a stop over town between Santiago and Granada, I only had 24 hours to see what I needed to see. After two minutes outside, I was ready to take refuge from the sun and popped into a museum. This one had some very famous paintings by El Greco. I would see his stuff a lot in this town and I decided I liked his style. His people look a little like fairies with long, pointy, and slightly bluish faces.

Cathedral

The main sight to see in Toledo is the cathedral, so I figured I should head over there. However, I got tricked (AKA, I didn’t know what I was doing) into buying a ticket to an exposition at the cathedral instead of an entrance to the cathedral. It worked out fine, though, because the exposition was just a cordoned off part inside the cathedral that had special art and doodads they don’t normally put on display. It was funny, though, at several points the people on one side of the barrier were looking at the ones on the opposite side, both wondering how we get in there.

The Toledo Cathedral is quite huge and quite beautiful. There are lots of different sections and colorful stained glass. In my exposition I saw lots of religious stuff, like outfits the priests (?) wore and books that must have taken some poor monks in the 1300s decades to create. 

At this point in the day, I was pretty sure I was going to die of heat exhaustion so I went back to the AC in the hotel for a couple hours. I can finally understand the Spanish siesta. It is not laziness, it is self-preservation!

Night jaunt

I emerged again around 9 PM. It was still around 90 degrees. I can’t even fathom what this place is like in August. I wandered through the cool Jewish quarter and marveled at the little symbols embedded in the street.

I then made my way through some quarter of a millennia old wall gates and found a spot to watch the sunset. It was full dark when I headed back to the hotel, and most of the little streets were empty. Without Google Maps I would have been hopelessly lost in the maze of the streets. 

Jewish synagogue

My main stop for the morning was the Santa Maria la Blanca synagogue, the oldest synagogue in Europe (reportedly), built in 1180. This synagogue was extra interesting, beyond its age because it looks more like a mosque than a synagogue, with geometric designs and scalloped archways. I loved it. 

Adios, Toledo

After getting confused again wandering around, I called another ride to take me back to the train station. No reason to carry luggage around in that heat. I’d like to return to Toledo sometime…maybe in winter.