Day 2 - Madrid/Toledo

16/9/2010 - Madrid to Toledo

Not a great morning. I've been having a hard time sleeping, and Geoffrey's back has been bugging him so he's been tossing and turning a lot, which keeps waking me up. So this morning, after getting to bed at 2:30, he got up at 6:30 to go out and explore - without a map. I fell back asleep for a while, only to be jolted awake at 8 realizing that Geoffrey still wasn't back. I was reaching total panic zone when he got back about an hour later (without the map, he got pretty lost) and we had a nice, pre-breakfast discussion about how his trying to be considerate and let me sleep was completely undone by the fact that I was trying to figure out how to find someone without a cell phone in a strange city. After trying to get a little more sleep, we checked out of our hotel but left our bags, then headed down to breakfast, then to the Mercado de Anton Martin just a few blocks from our hotel.

I love food shopping at home, and I really love food shopping in a foreign country, so I was in paradise picking out cheese, bread, meat (for Geoffrey), fruit, and juice for a picnic lunch in the park. It was a muggy, overcast day, and we were planning to spend a couple of hours exploring El Parque de Buen Retiro, which is kind of like Madrid's Central Park. We sniffed our way through the beautiful rose garden before visiting the Palacio Cristal, which I has somehow overlooked my first trip to Madrid. We found a nice spot for our picnic, then headed back to our hotel to pick up our bags and get to the train station to leave for Toledo.

El Parque de Buen Retiro

I had talked to Natalia that morning, and she had told read me the times for the train to Toledo, and we decided to aim for the 13.50. With Estacion Atocha only 2 metro stops away from us, we headed over around 1, thinking that would be plenty of time to buy tickets from an automated kiosk for the quick, easy, 30 minute trip to Toledo. WRONG. For some insane reason, you can't buy a ticket to Toledo from one of the fifty or so automated kiosks throughout the station, you have to take a number and wait in line forever to talk to a live person. I'm really not sure why, it's a simple, one-stop only train ride that leaves no room for confusion, so it's not like we were trying to figure out how to take a night train to Moscow or something complicated. So of course we missed the 13.50, and the train after that, and instead of getting into Toledo at 2:30 as we'd planned, hoping to have a decent part of the day to explore, we got there about 4:30. Geoffrey was very excited about the trains, which was good, because there are a whole lot more of them in our future.

Estacion Atocha, Madrid

The train station in Toledo is small, and simply beautiful. It's very old, with palm trees and a nice little cafe/bar where we grabbed a quick coffee (Geoffrey, of course) and another tortilla. After our snack, we bought a map in the station and asked if the people working there knew anything about where La Vuelta would finish the next day. One of the station police knew and showed us on the map, so we went to catch the bus to our hotel with an idea of where we'd need to be the next day.

The bus ride into town can really only be described as terrifying. Toledo is a medieval hill town, with very skinny, winding streets that are pretty narrow for a car, never mind for a bus. Geoffrey was very lucky that his seat was facing backwards, so he only witnessed the successful results of the dozen or so harrowing near-misses I had to watch head on. We got off at the stop for Plaza de Zocodover, which is as close as you can get to the cathedral, which was just a few streets from where we were staying. We ambled our way up to the cathedral with only a few wrong turns and found where we were staying, Hotel Santa Isabel. We checked in and were shown to our room - it was heaven. On the top floor, sleek and simple, modern but with a definite old world feel, and a view from a small balcony that opened onto the rooftops of the city and the cathedral. It was absolutely breathtaking, and only 55 euros a night. We did get a good laugh about the bed, which was actually two twin beds pushed together, very 1950's.

The view from our balcony

The view from our hotel's rooftop deck

After we got settled into our hotel, we headed out for dinner to a restaurant recommended in our Rick Steves guidebook, which turned out to be awful. A great deal, but way too fried for our taste - I had gazpacho (ok) and fried seafood and fries, which I could barely choke down beyond a few bites, an okay dessert and a nice glass of wine. Geoffrey had a salad and venison "tacos" which turned our to be about as similar as Spanish tortillas are to Mexican tortillas - it seemed to be some sort of venison stew, also with fries. Not good. The restaurant was at least not smoky, and pretty cool looking, to focus on some positive points. After that travesty of a meal, we headed back to our hotel under a cloudy sky. It was just starting to rain when we got back, and as we got ready for bed, the rain was really starting to come down and we could see lightening in the distance. That night there was a pretty big storm (luckily I had closed the doors to our balcony before it got too bad) and the next day it was clear and sunny.