Toledo

When I went to Madrid to get my French visa, I decided to take a detour to Toledo and Salamanca to make the trip less business, more awesome. Right after my visa appointment, I caught a 5.30 euro bus from Plaza Elíptica, a stop on Madrid's metro, to Toledo. It's a really easy bus ride. The bus comes every hour, and you just pay for the ticket in a machine. The trip there is only 45 minutes. If you're planning on day tripping to Toledo from Madrid, this is definitely the easiest way to do it.

When you get to Toledo, you can walk about 15 minutes from the bus station into the city. It's a bit uphill though, so if you want, you can take a cab. For one person, a cab ride from the bus station is about 4 euro. It's obviously better if you split, but that's not that bad, really.

I ended up staying at a really nice hostel, Hostel Oasis (when I say nice, I mean amazing quality and location, yet still under 11 euro a night - it was awesome). However, Toledo is really just a day trip. It would definitely be easier to book multiple nights in a hostel in Madrid then day trip from there to Toledo or Segovia.

After dropping stuff at my hostel, it was already starting to get dark (when I left the French embassy, it was pretty late). I wanted to go exploring though and save the touristy stuff for the next day. I walked back down the hill and through the entrance to the historic part of the city. Everything I saw on the way down was absolutely beautiful. I literally almost cried the minute I walked out of my hostel just because I was overwhelmed by all the loveliness. There was a really pretty park just outside of the city, so I wandered around there a bit. There were a few horchaterías, too, but unfortunately they were all closed, and just seeing them made me want horchata for the remainder of my trip.

On my walk back up, I stopped to appreciate a few of Toledo's many viewfests and looked in the windows of some stores. Toledo is well-known for their swords, so a lot of the stores you'll see there have swords, some other armor things, and some other handicrafts, such as some jewelry with gold threads hammered in. If you like marzipan, you'll definitely like Toledo, because every single store seemed to sell marzipan. I personally took advantage of that...

I also walked around Toledo's main kind of shopping area and Jewish quarter. Everything was all lit up for Christmas time, so it was really pretty. Almost everywhere you went you could see the cathedral lit up, and there were also lights with words in Hebrew to mark where the Jewish quarter began.

Since I was kind of tired from running around Madrid all day, I went back to my hostel early and planned my next day out. Rick Steves' book on Toledo was basically my lifesaver for the whole trip, and everything I saw was pretty much based on his amazing recommendations. 

My first destination for my touristy day in Toledo was this mosque. You can buy a tourist bracelet from there (and any of the six sights that the bracelet lets you in) for 8 euros. I would personally skip the tourist bracelet if I had to do it all over again, because while you can see six sights with it, if you only have a short amount of time there, only two of them are the top sights to see. The best stuff there you still have to pay for, and you might want more time in those.  The mosque on the inside was pretty empty. It wasn't as elaborate as the ones in Andalucía that you'll see, but I really loved the architecture outdoors and this really beautiful viewpoint.

The bracelet also gets you into this church, which is worth going to for the view. After a somewhat treacherous climb (not as dangerous as the next one I'll show you), you'll get to this amazing viewpoint from which you can see the cathedral and the alcazar/army museum. 

Another cool thing about Toledo is that is has a lot of places you can go to for free (and if it's not free, if you bring your Spanish student ID card with you, it will be for the most part). One of the free sites was this visigoth museum which has a ton of really cool artifacts, and the building itself is just super cool. It had another viewpoint, and it was actually really quite freaky going up. If you're claustrophobic or scared of heights, I would probably skip it, because the church above had probably the best viewpoint anyway, and this was legitimately dangerous.

I wandered back into the Jewish quarter of Toledo where this monastery was (that's also on the bracelet). This was probably my favorite site in Toledo. Isabel and Fernando were supposed to be buried here (they're buried in Granada as a symbol of their triumph over the moors), so it's really, really beautiful. I was a big fan of the architecture, which was really gothic but had many muslim influences, like the ceiling on the second floor for example. The patio in the center was also beautiful and had a bunch of orange trees growing in it. There's a cathedral attached to it, too. It's just a really lovely place.

I went to a couple synagogues in Toledo. This one I went to was really cool, and again, I really like the architecture. If you do only have time to visit one synagogue though, the next one is more museum-like and will tell you more about the history of the Jewish people in Toledo.  

I went to the Victorio Macho museum, which is free for students (or discounted, I don't remember). The sculptures were beautiful, but I do think my favorite part was their viewpoint. You could see this old bridge and all around by the river from it.

The Sephardic museum was the next stop on my trip, and the second synagogue I saw. The architecture and here is that classic mudéjar style, and they have a permanent exhibit with a lot of artifacts from before the Inquisition.  Around the museum there were a lot of gift stores; I really wanted to get a menorah, but I didn't want to spend too much money, and I wouldn't have had room for any souvenirs in my bag. 

The best part of a trip to Toledo is this little church, which houses on one side the famous Burial of Count Orgaz by El Greco. Unfortunately, I couldn't take pictures, but the painting is even more breathtaking in real life. I love El Greco.

Another stop on the tourist bracelet was this little church. It's very modest on the inside, but it's cool because you get to see Roman ruins in and under it. There's also another viewpoint that lets you see out onto the streets.

While waiting for the El Greco museum to be free at 3, I went to this torture museum and a Knight's Templar museum.  When I went to San Gimignano in Italy, I really wanted to go to the torture museum (I was alone on that one) but didn't, so for six euros I got access to this one which was super interesting and freaky at the same time, the Knight's Templar museum, which had an overwhelming amount of history (more reading than artifacts), and a museum that had a little Da Vinci exhibit going on. If you like to feel weirded out sometimes like I do, I highly recommend doing this.

I then went to the El Greco museum. This was another one of my favorite parts about the Toledo trip. They converted the old house into a museum with a handful of his works (a lot of the ones in there are copies or by his followers), and it's just a really cool place to wander around.

I went to the cathedral, of course. It was actually more impressive on the outside, I thought (although I may have just been really bored from seeing so many cathedrals in the past months). After seeing a bunch of cathedrals, on the inside they start to all look the same. It cost 8 euro to enter, no discount for anyone, and you get an audio guide (that wasn't really well coordinated with the layout of the cathedral and would make the whole visit last about 3 hours if you actually finished it, which I didn't because I was in a slight hurry). Although it is cool, I wouldn't say it's worth the 8 euro on a student budget. Surrounding the cathedral, there are a lot of cool shops. There was one especially for marzipan, and they constructed this huge cathedral out of it. 

I went to the army museum, too, after the cathedral. It was really really cool. The museum itself is really neat, as they built it up over an old (Roman?) fort. Unfortunately, it was close to closing time when I went, so I only had thirty minutes there. The visit was free when I went. Again, for Toledo, just look at the places hours, because most sites will have a time when they're free. 

My last stop was the museum across from the Alcazar. This is another place that you have to go to if you only have a few moments it the city. They have 12 El Grecos, a really cool part of the museum dedicated solely to ceramics, and then they have the museum kind of organized in a timeline, which I thought was super cool. You get to see artifacts all the way back to the Stone Age, then it goes to Roman, Visigoth, Muslim, etc. It really makes the complicated history of Toledo make sense. Again, free. I love this city. 

If you're in Madrid for a while, definitely take a little trip to Toledo. Round trip it's only about 11 euro, and I think it's definitely one of my favorite cities in Spain. If you've ever read a fairy tale, walk around Toledo, and you'll realize it was probably set here.