Day 3 - Toledo (La Vuelta)

17/09/2010 - Toledo

After FINALLY having a truly restful night's sleep (dare I hope we're over our jet lag already?!?) we got an early start on the day, with the intention of getting a nice breakfast and doing some non-Vuelta related things (per my request). We ended up eating breakfast at a place where the pastries are made by nuns, and I finally got to have the hot chocolate of my dreams - basically hot liquid pudding. Heavenly. I also picked up some of Toledo's famous marzipan and pine nut cookies. These are wonderful, I'm usually kind of a snob about desserts and will rarely give the time of day to something that doesn't contain chocolate, but these definitely make the list of exceptions. When they're done right, they're soft, chewy but not sticky, and studded with pine nuts that add the perfect crunch to balance the sweetness of the marzipan.

After breakfast, we walked to Santo Tome to see El Greco's "The Buriel of Count Orgaz", which is a magnificent in situ painting in the miniscule chapel of Santo Tome. I'd been lucky to see this on my first visit to Toledo, and had been looking forward to seeing it again. Then we hiked the few blocks back to the cathedral, which was thankfully not too crowded and spent a good amount of time wandering around, ooh-ing and ahh-ing and craning our necks to try to see all the golden details. So completely humbling and awe-inspiring, I'm constantly amazed by the dedication of all of the churches and cathedrals that took lifetimes to complete. We're so impatient now, it's no wonder no one builds things like that anymore. After a perusal of the treasury, which included not only golden, jewel-encrusted crosses and chalices, but also relics (saint's hands and tears and other weird, macabre body parts). Not having been raised Catholic, I just don't get the fascination with shriveled body parts.

After we emerged from the cathedral, it was nearly lunchtime, so we went in search of the market near the cathedral to get picnic supplies, and ended up well set with our usual assortment of meat, cheese, bread, fruit, and juice, plus some weird things that looked like a cross between a pepper and a pickle. I talked with a butcher who explained the difference between some of the jamon he was selling (look at the color of the hoof, if the hoof is black, it's higher quality).

Geoffrey's black-hooved lunch

The day had warmed up, so we swung by our hotel for a quick change before heading out of the main town area to where La Vuelta would finish. On our way, we stopped at the Santa Cruz museum, which is located in a beautiful building that was once a hospital, and is free. The main reason I wanted to go was to see the el Grecos they're supposed to have, but from what I could tell from lady I asked, they were out on loan. So we looked at some ceramics and tapestries, which were cool to see, but I really can't say I have a huge appreciation for either, as I don't know a whole lot about them. The highlight was the building itself, with a tranquil courtyard, and Geoffrey's favorite, bullet holes in the facade. After that, we were off to La Vuelta.

Museo de Santa Cruz courtyard

Geoffrey was so excited he was all but skipping ahead of me as we made our way down the winding street out of town to the finish line for La Vuelta. This is why we were heading down about 3 hours before the race was supposed to finish. Honestly, if I'd been okay with it, we would have spent the whole day down there, just watching the set up.

I'm glad that we were able to time things so we could see a stage of the race, especially in Toledo, a town I was really wanting to get back to. When we were planning our trip (well, I say we, but I really mean I), I asked Geoffrey what he wanted to do, and his only requests were bike-related - no preference of cities to visit, areas to be sure to spend time in, a not to be missed museum, nothing like that. Just to see a stage of La Vuelta and spend some time on a bike. If you don't know anything about La Vuelta, I'm really not the one to enlighten you, as I know about 3 things more than nothing about it. I'll have to get Geoffrey to write a post about who was there and who won, etc. But here's what I do know: La Vuelta is one of the big deal, multi-stage European bike races - everyone knows about the Tour de France in July, but there's also Il Giro d'Italia in May, and La Vuelta de Espana in August/September. Huh, maybe that's all I know about it, I guess I oversold myself with the knowing three things bit. Anyway, it's a bike race that most of the big teams/pros compete in, it has about 20 stages (days/races), and we're getting to catch the tail end of it. I think the Toledo stage is the second or third to the last stage before it ends in Madrid. Sadly, we won't be around for that, which would be a pretty cool thing to experience.

After eating our lunch on a bench under a gorgeous vine-covered archway, we roamed around the team buses and the finish line set up, and bought a La Vuelta 10 euro souvenir set that had a t-shirt, hat, horribly cheap sunglasses that would probably only fit a Keebler elf, a metal sign, and a few other odds and ends, all in a pseudo-backpack bag. It was still too early to stake out a spot to watch the finish, so we made our way over to the parking lot where a lot of the team buses and support vehicles were parked. We ended up in what seemed to be a conference center, an expansive, modern building with a spacious, airy bar and a terrace with a view of the buses (guess where we sat). Geoffrey ordered his 17th coffee of the day, and we were sitting outside and enjoying the view of the buses, when a girl came up to us and asked if we were press (we had the big camera), and ended up sitting down and chatting with us for a while. Her name was Jessica and she's a cyclist as well, who was there to see her boyfriend Tejay van Garderen ride in the stage. Geoffrey knew of him, which was pretty cool, he rides for HTC and is actually from Tacoma. As it was getting closer to when the riders were supposed to be coming in, we headed back up to the finish and, with one sentence, Geoffrey's life was made - Jessica needed to stop at the team bus to talk to driver and asked us if we wanted to come in and check it out. It's basically just a big, nice bus, but it was definitely a highlight for Geoffrey.

Garmin team bus/car

Once we got back up to the race course, we staked out a good spot to see the riders coming into the finish and decided that we had time to get some wine to pair with our remaining bits of cheese and jamon. Geoffrey guarded our spot while Jessica & I went to get wine (easy) and paper cups to drink it out of (surprisingly difficult - after a few stops, we managed to charm a shopkeeper out of three small paper Coca-cola cups). It was really great hanging out with Jessica, she actually lives in Lucca and trains there when she's not home in the US, and she would be there when we would be in Florence, so we exchanged e-mail addresses so we could try to meet up for dinner.

Having never seen a pro cycling race, I have no basis of comparison, but it was fantastic. It seemed like it was over so quickly given how long the people had been setting up, but it was really exciting to see the riders coming in. I would have no problem doing this again, even not knowing who everybody was, it was a really fun day.

Geoffrey & our new friend Jessica waiting for the peleton at the finish

After the race was over, Jessica headed up to meet Tejay at their hotel back in town, and we walked back to our hotel to unload some of our stuff before heading to a very early dinner. We needed to get packed and to bed early to catch our 3 AM taxi to the Madrid-Barajas airport for our 7 AM flight to Venice. This was NOT my original plan, I had booked us on a 3:30 PM flight, which would be no problem to get to from Toledo via the train back to Madrid and the Metro, but that flight was canceled, and our only other real option was to take the 7AM flight or switch days, which really wasn't an option. I'm trying to focus on the positive, which is an extra day in Venice. Hopefully we'll be awake enough to enjoy it.

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.