“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.” ― (Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote)

We awoke still digesting the amazingly delicious suckling pig cooked in officially the “oldest restaurant in the world” – Botin’s. Then headed downstairs with perfect timing to meet Andy and Kristin as we made our way to the train station to catch the very fast train to Toledo – 70km in 30min.

We strolled around Toledo, getting our bearings, whilst the temperature was still a comfortable 24C (and rising). Toledo has been around for millennia constantly being fought for by the Romans, then the Visigoths, then the Moors & Muslims, then the Catholics (i.e., with a history probably very similar to most of the places we have been). But one redeeming feature of this town is that over the millennia, Catholics, Muslims and Jews have learnt to co-exist, quite comfortable and with a minimum of fuss in fact, oh what a surprise…not! Even to the extent that Celtic intertwining patterns have merged with Persian/Islamic designs and the Star of David.

Atocha Madrid Train Station

Toledo Train Station

Toledo was the home of Cervantes, who wrote "Don Quixote" (Man of La Mancha), and there are several tributes and statues of him around town.

As the temperature started to rise we decided to head indoors to the Santa Cruz Museum which provided a beautiful display of artworks along with a narrative of the political fortunes experienced in Toledo. The highlight were a number of paintings by El Greco - especially a gigantic Assumption (which I could look at quite happily for an unspecified amount of time).

Then as the temperature continued to rise and the town was hilly we caught a tourist bus around the city walls and captured incredible views of the hill-top town surrounded on 3 sides by the Tajo river (which is actually the same Tejo River, where we sipped twilight drinks at its mouth by the 25^th of April Bridge in Lisbon a few nights earlier). At one point some entrepreneurs had rigged up a flying fox of about 300 metres between the two banks about 100 metres above the river, but we did not have time to enjoy that experience.

Rather it was time to cool our sweaty bums in the Cathedral. Amazing observations”

-          The choir which consisted of about 200 chairs, each with a unique wood carving on the underside of each chair, each chair was then surrounded above, below and beside by other unique carvings in wood or marble (i.e., there were thousands of different creatures in various positions carved out of many materials or cast in bronze.)

-          Secondly there was a room which detailed the names of all the archbishops of Toledo since the time of Christ and ….!!!! With portraits

·         Thirdly the sacristy was surrounded by portraits of the 12 apostles by El Greco, and a painting by El Greco of Christ being lead to his crucifixion which I could happily gaze at for an unspecified amount of time, plus the Goyas, Titians and Velasquezs where you could actually rub you’re your nose into their paint

·         Then there were two reliquaries of bones and arms of saints

·         Then there were the colossal trunks of stone holding up the ceiling

You get the idea.

Then back on the train to Madrid and to the Plaza de Toros to see a bullfight.

But it was not a fight (a fair fight) as the bull had no chance because the picadors exhausted the bull before the matador delivered the final death blow. We left after 2 fights of the scheduled 6 and had recovery drinks on the terrace of our hotel listening to loud live rock and roll from the Calleo Plaza across the road and the temperature is still rising. Big day tomorrow at the Prado.