D124 - Toledo

We continued our drive back to Madrid through Castile and La Mancha. Yes, that La Mancha - check out the windmill! The terrain was lovely, and we decided we just had to stop to confirm that the trees all around us were in fact olive trees as we suspected. Thomas even tried an olive, and he was very sorry he did. I don't know if you're not supposed to eat them straight from the tree or whether this one just wasn't ready, but he said it was awful.


We stopped in Toledo, a very beautiful walled city that's been around since Roman times .


We visited two synagogues and a 10th century mosque. Unlike some towns under Moorish control, it's said that Muslims, Jews, and Christians all lived in relative equality here. However, things changed when Isabel and Ferdinand took over, and over 400,000 Jews were forced to flee the country. Both the synagogues and the mosque we visited were all turned into Catholic churches after that.

Speaking of Catholic churches, we toured several of those. This picture is from one of the cloisters. We went to the Iglesia de Santo Tomé, which houses the famous El Greco painting “El entierro de señor de orgaz,” and the Cathedral of Toledo. The Cathedral was pretty amazing - enormous, ornate...but unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures. One of the interesting parts of the visit for me was a tomb there. It was of Cardinal Mendoza. I wonder if we're related!

After all that sightseeing we really needed a drink, so we drove across the river to the Parador (government-run hotel). It's up on a hill and had great views of the city. There were at least 5 different brides and grooms taking pictures there.


We would have loved to eat dinner in front of those beautiful vistas, but they didn't start serving until 8:30 and we still had more driving to do. We wanted something quick so we went to the local mall food court. Big mistake! You would have thought it was Christmas time with all those cars. The up side was we got to try a new Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavor called American Pie. It tastes like apple pie and has chunks of crust in it. If only it was raw pie dough - my favorite!

We drove to our next Parador, a castle that used to belong to the Count of Oropesa. It was really nice inside, and so cool to be staying in a castle. Our room had these heavy wood beam ceilings and the walls must have been two feet thick. Now this is what we'd hoped for from the Parador experience!

-Elva