Friday, March 6, 2009
Woke up around 5:30, took a taxi to the bus station, then caught our 7:00 am bus to Madrid. Ate our biscocho (delicious cake type thing Julia made for us) amidst all the homeless people still sleeping in the bus station. They played the same stupid movie that we saw on our last Madrid-Granada bus and it didn´t get any better the second time around. I still have yet to see the end! Took the metro, then checked into our hostel in Madrid right away, the place where Sara and her friend Amanda who is studying in The Netherlands were going to stay too. There was a big protest in the Puerta de Sol (big plaza) and we never figured out what it was about but there were big red flags, chanting, and someone giving a speech on a platform. Took the Metro again (we´re absolute pro´s) to the other bus station to go to Toledo. Walked through the ancient city walls uphill and then down into the city, it was so pretty! There is soooo much history it´s unbelieveable. I can´t even begin to explain it, try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledo,_Spain, that might help a bit but it really can´t compare to learning about the people who lived there while actually walking through the city. Long story short, LOTS of famous Spaniards have lived there throughout history and it´s one of the only places in the world where three religions coexisted peacefully for hundreds of years. Beautiful walled city in the steep, rocky hills surrounded by a river. First, we saw the big cathedral - I´m really not getting sick of them yet, they´re so beautiful! (I guess that might be because we´ve been too cheap to go inside any of them... we usually just peek our heads in, take a picture, then when we get yelled at we take off) We stopped in the tourism office and scored a couple of awesome posters and a mini book of semana santa for free! Taylor can vouch for this - I was super excited :) After that we wandered around the city, seeing the main plaza, TONS of tourism shops (sidenote - Toledo sells more souvenirs than any other city in Spain, lots of black jewelry and pottery inlaid with gold, also lots of swords!), statues of Don Quixote who was from Castilla la Mancha, the Alcázar (military fortress), mazapan (also famous in Toledo, not my favorite sweet treat though - I´m what Julia calls a chocolatera), the monestary, and El Greco´s house (SUPER famous painter who lived in Toledo and now houses lots of his most important works) . Whew! Rick Steeves told us to take this ridiculous tourist train even though we would feel dumb so we decided to go for it. It was pretty embarrassing but totally worth it! It took us across the river and we got to see the city from a different view and hear an ENGLISH recording of the history and stories of everything we passed. I got tons of great pictures because even though it was a beautiful sunny day, half the sky was pitch black under this huge cloud! This guy in front of us snapped a picture every 5 seconds for the entire 45 minute ride - unbelieveable. Ok so then we headed back to Madrid, went grocery shopping at Corté Inglés then made dinner at the hostel. 3 packets of soup for €1 and a big baguette for €.67! I´m so proud of our travelling skills these days :) Even though our room had 12 beds and another sleeping bag-type sheet, I slept just fine! Guess I´m getting used to this whole ¨backpacking¨ thing, epecially considering that I literally brought only my little backpack. Not even a purse (well, it was stuffed up in my bag so I could fill it up for the way home) I never could´ve done that before coming to Spain!
