Toledo is an old city surrounded on three sides by water. It has a lot of history, including many attempted invasions.

We rented a car in Madrid and headed for Toledo. When we got there, we couldn’t find the way to the hotel because the signs were so messed up, so we ended up driving around the city a few times and got lost inside the city as well. We took a bunch of pictures with views of the city from across the water.

It took us about 2 hours to find the hotel. The roads there are very narrow and are mostly two-way roads. At one point, we ended up going up this small road that was uphill and came to a dead end. The problem was there were some people behind us that were late for work. I tried backing the car up the right way, which was difficult because there was not very much leeway, and ended up scratching part of the back of it. One of the main problems was that I was still getting used to the clutch on the rental car, and by the time one of the guys took control and backed the car out of the alley, the clutch was slipping waaay to much.

The main plaza in Toledo is Plaza De Zocodover. We based most of our adventures in the city from that one area. There were a lot of Americans there, mostly teenagers on class trips. We took a cheezy little train, the Tren Imperial, from there, which took us all around the city and it’s surroundings across the river. It was so hot though that by the time I got off the train I was sweating like a pig.

There is a big church in Toledo called San Juan de los Reyes, which has a cool courtyard with gutter drains of all shapes - some that look like people, animals, or dwarves. The ceiling on the upper level of the courtyard was a beautiful inlaid wood.

The Alcazar is a huge imposing building that was used as a fortress/armory during the wars. It’s really cool looking from the outside but inside there wasn’t much except for a military museum.

One night we were in Toledo, we ate at the Adolpho restaurant. At first we thought it was going to suck because a man who seemed to be the manager was being an asshole. He was yelling at the people that are working there, and making a big commotion. We didn’t have reservations so we had to wait and luckily there was a table for us. When we were ordering, the manager was being really pushy, advising me to take an expensive appetizer over a soup I ordered, and suggesting a wine with a higher price than I had asked for.

However, it turned out really well. The wine was discounted to the price I asked for, and it was a 1973 bottle of Rioja. The wine was older than us! I thought that was cool as hell. It tasted amazing too. The more expensive appetizer I ended up ordering was excellent as well as the rest of the food. So it was a great experience, I would definitely recommend it. Drinking a bottle between the both of us with desert wine (for Theresa) and Grand Marnier 150 year (for me), made us quite tipsy. Outside, there was a store called Boutique Teresa, which made a good photo op.

The whole time we were in Spain, it was pretty hot, so we ate a lot of ice cream and popsicles (shuper-happy!), from Camy.

Toledo is world-renowned for selling knives and swords\. I bought a pocketknife as a memento. Toledo is also known for its mazepan, which was good too.

Other places in Toledo: We visited the Jewish Quarter in Toledo but there wasn’t much there of notice. We also walked around the Bisagra Gate area, where at night there was a guy with
a dancing goat.

On our third day staying in Madrid, we took a two hour train ride (with hard plastic uncomfortable seats) to Segovia.

Once we got there, we had to take a 15 minute bus ride up to the old city. There, we hung out at Plaza Mayor for a while. There are a lot of Plaza Mayors in Spain. Right by the plaza was the Gothic Cathedral, which was really cool from the outside and had stone spires.

Segovia, like a lot of these Spanish cities, is old and small with narrow streets. Luckily we didn’t have a car at this time (hint hint foreshadowing), so we walked around. On of the other main attractions in Segovia other than the cathedral, was the castle, called the Alcazar. There are also mui Alcazars in Espana. The Alcazar is what Disney’s castle was modeled after, so it might look kind of familiar.

We went for a look inside the castle, which was Theresa’s first castle so she was enamored with it. I, however, have seen others and although this one was cool, it wasn’t amazing or anything. We did get to play by the knights though. Inside were some intricate wall carvings, and on the “roof” you could hang out by the tower. Also from the “roof” you could see a great view of the cathedral.

After we left the castle we walked over to another Plaza (I can’t remember the name) to see the Roman Aqueduct. This aqueduct was built a long time ago by the Romans using only stones. There was no mortar used and yet the aqueduct still stands today. It was a pretty awesome sight.

By the aqueduct, we ate at this restaurant recommended by the books, Meson something other other, and I had the special suckling pig. It was a piece of a little baby pig that was fed acorns it’s entire life. Sounds kind of gross I know but it was a very juicy piece of pork. It’s hard to be a good Jew in Spain. :)

When we finished in the old city, and got back to the train station we found out that the train we wanted to take was canceled and we had to wait a few hours. It was kind of boring but we walked around a bit and it wasn’t too bad. We also met some people from Orlando, who were in the same situation. The reason why the train was canceled was that the workers were on strike. Actually the whole time we were in Spain, we kept seeing these people march around everywhere with their red banners. You rarely see that kind of stuff in the U.S. any more.

Madrid is a very big city, as you can see from the map, one of the largest in Spain. If you look at the Metro map, only a small part of it was what we actually went to. The metro there goes everywhere which is really cool. The metro does close (I think around 3am or so), so it’s not like the NY subway, but the fact that it goes all over makes it cool. In the metro station by our hotel, we took a picture in a photo booth. We got one of those picture strips, which came out pretty cool..

We stayed at the Puerta de Toledo hotel by the (you guessed it) Puerta de Toledo. It’s an old stone gate that was once a real gate into the walled city before the walls were torn down.

While we walked around, we saw a Rember sign, which is an inside joke. Get it? Rember! Ha ha!

The Museo De Jamon is actually not a museum but a tapas place where you can stand and get tapas and drinks. All along the ceiling were hanging big legs of ham (jamon) with plastic cups underneath to catch the fat. But nearer to the top of the ceiling were legs without the plastic cups. Well, we were standing there eating when I noticed that the balding guy next to us had something drip on his head. It was the fat from the jamon! The funny part is that the guy just wiped his head, looked at the fat, and resumed eating as if nothing happened. Hilarious..

There is a section of Madrid where the Palacio Real (Royal Palace) is. There is also a relatively new cathedral next to it. The cathedral is really cool because it has stained glass windows that are more modern than typical cathedral windows. They depict their figures in a sort of picasso-ish light. It was one of my favorites in Spain.

Between the cathedral and the palacio was a large square. We went inside to check it out. We actually got yelled at in Spanish by some security woman because we used our flash. The billiards room’s wall was really cool. It was decorated in an Oriental style.

After the Palacio we checked out the Prado museum, which wasn’t as impressive as I heard. It was mostly portraits of Christ or other old people. The Reina Sofia was a much better museum depicting modern artists. We some some good photographic exhibits and some interesting (to say the least) “sculpture.” Just outside of the Prado was Retiro Park. There were cool shaped trees there.

One of the cool places to go in Madrid was the Plaza Mayor, which is a plaza surrounded on all sides by a big building where people actually live. Below is me in Plaza Mayor by the statue of Felipe III on his horse. We hung out here de noche (at night) when all the people were out.

Our first restaurant was not a tapas restaurant. We ordered wine, but since I didn’t know what red wine was in Spanish I ordered Vino Rosado which sounded like red wine to me. It turned out to be Rose wine. It wasn’t bad I guess, but that was the last time I made that mistake on the trip.

On the second night, we did the Madrid Tapas Bar Crawl. We read about this one place that was known for it Gambas de Ajo (shrimp with garlic), and it truly lived up to it’s name. The shrimp was cooked with olive oil and garlic right in front of us, and it tasted really good too! There was a sort-of little trough right below the bar there that was filled with discarded shells from shrimp. That night was the best tapas crawl we did all trip.
Other places didn’t have as much variety in such a small area, although Sevilla came close.

Madrid was not so impressive to me at the time, but when I think back on it, the city was a cool place to live. Maybe not for tourists, but for people living there. There was always something to do it seemed. And the women there were beautiful!

On the third day we were there, in the morning we took a RENFE (Spain’s train system) train to Segovia.

Theresa and I went to Spain in June of 2001 for 2 and a half weeks. We flew into Madrid and out of Barcelona.

What can I say about Spain but that it’s awesome. The country is so big that even with all the time we had there we only saw about half of it! Each area is also very diverse. For example, in Madrid, tapas are everywhere. Every time I say tapas people always think I’m saying
topless. Anyway, tapas are basically small appetizers that you stand up at a bar and eat. However, in Barcelona, there are very few tapas places. The food there in general was simple, but good. And there was always plenty of wine or sangria to wash it down.

We started with three nights in Madrid, then rented a car and drove around for most of the vacation. We dropped off the car in Valencia to take a ferry to Ibiza. If you’ve seen Wild On, then you know what I’m talking about baby. From there we took an overnight ferry to Barcelona.

Click on the cities in the map to get pictures and more about each area that we visited.

The places were visited in this order: Madrid, Segovia, Toledo, Cordoba, Sevilla, Jerez, Arcos, Ronda, Granada, Alicante, Valencia, Ibiza, Barcelona.