The Bahblog

We spent Monday exploring Toledo. It took two attempts to get us there (we missed our first train), but we did make it and had a lovely time. For some background, Toledo was once Spain's capital and has a rich Jewish, Muslim, and Catholic history. It's a quick day trip from Madrid and a nice break from the crowds. The day started with a quick self-guided walking tour to get ourselves oriented.

The Plaza de Zocodover functioned as our anchor point throughout the day and was our starting point for the walking tour. Fun fact - the benches in the Plaza have tile backs that portray scenes from Don Quixote (Cervantes' wife was from the Toledo area).

We followed Rick Steve's guidance and took a selfie with the Cervantes (author of Don Quixote) statue.

From the Plaza, we walked up Calle del Comercio (the main shopping drag which includes a shout out to the other Toledo) before ending up in Plaza del Ayuntamiento. The Plaza is directly in front of the amazing cathedral, which we spent a couple hours touring.

It's hard to put into words the beauty of this cathedral, so I'll let most of the pictures below do it some justice.

The highlight of the cathedral is the high altar.

The treasury is also pretty remarkable as it contains a 10-foot-high, 430 pound gold-and-silver monstrance. The inner part is 40 pounds of yellow gold. Wow.

We spent hours wandering through the cathedral, listening to the audioguide and complementing that information with our guidebook.

It was a breathtaking experience. We also climbed the 200 steps to the top of the bell tower, snapping photos along the way.

Staring at all of that gold and beauty made us hungry so we grabbed lunch after the cathedral. We ended up in a nice local restaurant (we were the only tourists) where we were treated to a three course meal for 12 euros. The restaurant specialized in food from the Basque region of norther Spain, and included a large appetizer, half of a pig, and an amazing dessert.

With our bellies full of food, we went to the Santo Tome. After seeing the main cathedral, the Santo Tome seemed slightly unremarkable, but it does include El Greco's The Burial of the Count of Orgaz. No photos are allowed, so I'll do my best to describe it (with a little help from Rick Steves). It portrays the 1323 burial of Count Don Gonzalo Ruiz of Orgaz, the mayor of Toledo. Saints Augustine and Stephen are in attendance on earth, and other saints wait in heaven for his soul along with Jesus and Mary. The funeral is attended by the most important men in town, which act as the physical diving line between heaven and earth. A baby represents the Count of Orgaz's soul ascending to heaven, where he is warmly welcomed. El Greco actually painted it about 250 years after the funeral and included his son and himself in the earth portion of the painting. It's considered to be his finest work and it does not disappoint. To give you a sense of El Greco's work, below is one of his pieces from the Cathedral.

And below is the Santo Tome peice represented on on tile. The original is a lot better, guys.

We spent the rest of our day in Toledo walking all around the city, including through the Jewish Quarter (Toledo has a rich Jewish history).

Toledo has an old history of sword making, and we stopped in a store to admire some traditional spanish broadswords and bouting foils. Sword stores were everywhere!

and of course, stopped for tea and beer.

We also crossed the bridge and walked out to an amazing lookout point. It was about a 40 minute walk each way, with steep uphill climbs, but it was worth it.

Toledo is known for its mazapan, a special type of cookie made by nuns. Here's a bunch of nun dolls making mazipan, so you get the idea.

We spent part of our evening eating mazapan in the main Plaza. It was absolutely delicious.

We finished our day with a glass of wine in the main Plaza before walking back to the train station. The return trip to Madrid was nice and quick and we had a lovely walk back to our AirBnB, including a quick stop at Cien Montaditos.

PS - Shout out to Toledo, Ohio

PPS - Toledo has some odd tourist buses that look like trains ...?