There didn't seem to be a lot of interest in Spain from the majority of the bus, but I really think that those who chose to skip this portion of the tour really missed out - Toledo is a beautiful old city, quite small, but with a lot of character in its architecture as the result of a very rich history.
One of our local tour guides said it well, if you come to Spain without seeing Toledo, you haven't seen Spain. This city was essentially the foundation of the country and has a lot of influence from the Moors (Arabs) who occupied Spain at the turn of the 1st millennium for about 350 years until it was reclaimed by the Catholics in 1492 via a treaty rather than a war (something pretty different for Europes history from what we've seen).
Well before the Moors this city was built by the Romans from about 2000 years ago, at the time it was called Toledum. So you can still find Roman ruins in this city, pretty much like most other cities in Central Europe.
So Toledo is a living museum showing its history in the shape and facade of its buildings, the unique style of its artwork, and some of the skilled trades happening here.
For those of you like me who have grown up (or have I?) on stories of chivalrous knights, daring Musketeers and the like you probably already know this, for many years the best steel for making swords and armour in Europe came from Toledo. As such all my favourite toys were there, swords, shields, armour - and I couldn't buy any of it because I would never get it through customs.....*sigh*, I love our country, but that really sucks. I settled for some hand made cuff links with the Toledo emblem on them while Nicky picked up a beautiful pendant.
Something else that was cool in this trip, the Corpus Christi celebration is this coming Thursday which is a pretty big deal in Toledo. There is a huge procession where they walk this beautiful gold and silver sculpture which contains the "body of Christ" bread through the streets of Toledo.
They decorate the city for this event with flags draped from many balconies and they cover the walkways where the procession goes with canopies in the event of rain or, as our guide pointed out, an errant bird shit.
Unfortunately all the really cool shots of the city are on our cameras, but here is the cathedral in town, another gothic-styled one:
Our guide was telling us that one of the unfortunate things about being a resident of Toledo is the very strict rules around the modifications you can make to your home as the entire city is a unesco listed heritage site.
She mentioned that it is a semi-common occurrence that someone will be digging out their basement and discover ruins - suddenly they have a museum under their house and have a whole lot of expense which they get partially reimbursed for to excavate the ruins.
It also means that in some cases the houses are actually older than the roads when at some time in the past the road was broadened and raised to allow more traffic. So some houses have a doorway that is below the level of the road:
Fortunately it swings inwards..
After Toledo we enjoyed an afternoon of more tapas and shopping in the Goya area of Madrid. Madrid is bloody hot so we managed to order ice creams in mangled Spanish ( Spangle?), at one point an old Spanish lady was laughing at me..I'd obviously said something hilarious to her, but we managed to get our ice creams and left her with a smile,so I considered it a win.
We're heading off to Barcelona today for Nicky's birthday, there's a dinner with a flamenco show planned for tomorrow night which is cool, we will have to find somewhere nice to celebrate a very special persons birthday tonight...I'm sure Barcelona will rise to the challenge.
Cheers,
Brandon.
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