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Madrid/Toledo, 1-4 June
Those of you who have been paying attention will now cry, "what happened to 31 May??" To which we will answer, "we spent ALL OF IT on a TRAIN!!"
We left Florence at 4:40 p.m. on 30 May, and arrived in Madrid at 7:00 p.m. on 31 May, at which point we found our hostel, phoned home (from a telephone booth in front of a cinema, in the pouring rain) made pasta, and went to bed. 1 June was spent at the Prado, and we left for Toledo first thing in the morning on 2 June. 2 June was spent trying to find our hostel ("Jacinto dice!!"), thinking we were being propositioned/sold into slavery by a waiter, wondering if we'd accidentally given over our passports to black marketeers, and wandering around the Calle de Commerce peering into shops and enjoying the architecture, and worrying about money.
Sitting around in village squares freaking out about the amount of money we were spending was a theme on this trip.
I have no photos of Madrid that I've scanned in. My memories of the creepy guy in the hostel are enough.
Final note: going from Italy to Spain is a horrendous shock to your now thoroughly pampered stomach. It will not be happy with you.
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The Toledo train station.
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Street scene in Toledo. A fascinating combination of Old European and Moorish architecture. The cathedral is spectacular; impossible to negotiate, but spectacular. The synagogue was closed when we went, so we spent some time at the Vittorio Macho museum, which is Toledo's best kept secret. Great mid-twentieth-century gardens, with a gorgeous view over a gorge, and Senor Macho (hee hee) was a pretty good sculptor and sketcher himself. There's also a little video on the history of Toledo, which you can get in English or Spanish, and the whole thing is only two or three euros.
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Here's the view I was talking about.
