Spain: Day 4... recuperate day

 

Tomorrow, train to Cordoba, some site seeing, then train to Sevilla for the night.

Dessert was some of our candy stash :) 

Dinner was on the terrace at Museo del Jamon in Plaza Mayor. Beautiful evening in Madrid to just sit and try to take it in.

Bailley is really getting into the 4pm siesta, illustrated above. She'll kill me, but seems like fire play since she tried to kill me in Toledo.

Saint Michael is where we grabbed lunch. Empanada, paella, and sangria... all so good.

Walked back to the apt... this is the outside of Saint Michael market in the background.

We got to where we wanted to go and... and it was closed. What?!? Yeah, closed due to the police situation. Oh well, we'll try again Saturday or Sunday. So, we stop at a candy shop and buy 30 euros of candy! The perfect trade.

Long walk to near the Prado museum, passing lots of government buildings. Hmmm... so many police and barricades. I wonder if it had anything to do with the NATO meetings being held in Madrid. Something tells me it does.

Made it to Puerto del Sol. Pretty, but tons of construction so the monuments were even hard to see.

The day started for me with toasts aguacate and flat white from the coffee shop. B was sleeping. She's still trying to catch up on sleep from Barcelona and also being a bit sick (throat/sinus, not covid). We left the apt to do a bit of shopping, stopping her for B a croissant.

Spain: Day 3, day trip to Toledo

 Remember, start at the bottom :)

Then we started our walk around the other half of the city. Umm, literally. We decided to walk down to the Tagus river and walk on a trail for a little nature. Well, it turned into a survival hike of sorts, in that I wasn't sure if I was going to survive :) . We finally made it back to that original bridge where we crossed the river, climbed up to it, and slowly trudged to the train station. It wasn't even 4pm and I was completely worn out. I think I have ascertained that 5-6 hours of walking up and down hills is my new maximum... maybe 120% of my maximum. Our tickets back to Madrid were for 9pm, how's that for an overestimation of capability? Well, live and learn. We bought new tickets and hopped on the train back. Not as long as I thought it would be, but a fantastic day.

We walked half way around the city and then went inside the medieval wall to grab a very late lunch (or as they call it in Spain, lunch).

Alcazar up close-er. It so big, you can't get real close and still get a picture.

And of course a lot of Bailley just being Bailley.

We did tons of walking, plus it's quite a hilly town. Beautiful pictures any where and any direction you turned.

Most of the monuments and sites we walked around, but we did go into Catedral Primed Santa Maria de Toledo. Just spectacular and the pictures don't do it justice. 

The streets were very narrow and sprawled in lots of directions with plenty of dead ends.

Still plenty of hams too, LOL.

Yeah, easy to see why the whole walled, old section is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

A short walk and Alcazar leaps right out at you.

The small train station was so ornate.

Right off the bat, you can see all the cultural infusions and differences. Toledo has been (is?) shared between Arab, Jewish, and Christian populations.

The day started a tad early (my doing), with a train ride at 9:20am Madrid Atocha to Toledo.

Spain: Day 2... more exploring and Prado Museum

 The editor inserts pictures oldest at the bottom, so I'm going to stop rearranging all the time... so just read from bottom to top.

Ha, funny story. On a few walks, I had seen Museo del Jamon. That was one of the bocadillo places I researched before the trip. But the entrance was tiny, no hanging hams, looked like a tiny nook of a tourist trap... man, I was so disappointed with the web vs. reality. But as we walked around Plaza Mayor, we see what appears to be the main entrance, what I had been seeing was just some small access door. WoohooOO... definitely stays on my list of places to hit :) 

Lastly we walked through Plaza Mayor.

We had been wanting to try churros here and we finally did. This one place has been serving churros for over 100 years. They were served with a chocolate sauce, oh my. 

Dinner was at Saint Michael market. A bun with Spanish chorizo, cone of fried shrimp, and some empanadas.

Just another pretty European alley on our walk back toward the apartment.

They didn't allow photography inside the museum, so I snapped one as we left. So many works from Goya, Rubens, and Titian. The place is so large, it's daunting.

We chilled at the park awaiting our ticket time at the Museo Nacional del Prado. 

We've been using these fountains scattered about. They reminded us of the ones in Rome.

We went to the Palacio de Cristal.

It had lots of fountains and a lake with tons of people rowing.

on our way to Retiro Park. The park was huge and just beautiful.

and Puerta Alcala..

We walked past the Palacio de Cibeles...

Then we took a nice stroll down Gran Via. This, as you can tell, is the big, main shopping area. The architecture was still really pretty.

Started full day 2 with a breakfast at a coffee shop inside a bookstore. Cute little find by Bailley.