Spain - Toledo - Heat and Hills

The world´s least motivated bus ride got me to Madrid from Barcelona in about nine hours on Saturday. The bus literally stopped every 1.5 hours for a twenty minute break, and for half an hour in Zaragoza to pick up more passengers. Better yet, my watch was stolen right off my wrist while I and my seatmate were napping sometime on the ride, meaning I once again have no means of setting an alarm clock or of knowing the time generally. It wasn´t even worth stealing. I bought it for $5 at a Walmart and it has a crack in the screen face. That was my third watch this trip. Sigh...

After poking around Madrid a bit and discovering it´s much to my liking, I decided to spend a little more time here after my hectic time in Barcelona. It´s a good place to do day trips from such as Avila, Cuenca and Toledo. So off I went to Toledo with Eugenia from Buenos Aires on Monday. A licketysplit train got us there in half an hour and we were suitably impressed with the fortressed city on the mountain.



What we had not anticipated was the hills and heat we would have to contend with to explore said city. The walk from the train station was an ominous start, already 35 degrees and over 1 km straight upward incline. And that got us to the Wall of the old city. Fortunately, Eugenia´s friend Michaelangelo met up with us with his car and as a Toledo local, chauffeured us around the worst of the hills and took us to the Parador hotel on the hill opposite to get the best vista of Toledo.



After he went back to work, we wandered around the churches and old buildings, revelling in the Roman, Spanish and Islamic architecture and despising the intensity of the sun, lack of shade and upward leading streets in all directions. By the end of the day, I was dangerously close to yet another round of heat exhaustion, and narrowly escaped my doom with a well timed yogourt shake break before our train back to Madrid.



Fun fact... did you know Toledo has been a renown region for sword making? Now you know.