Spain – Feb/Mar 2014 – Toledo to Madrid

After leaving Cordoba it was difficult to believe that our senses could continue to be stimulated to the degree that they had been for the last few days. Boy were we in for a shock.

The very trusty diesel ford and Chris – stopped for a leg stretch on the way to Toledo

The drive to Toledo was uneventful other than the cargo in a ute in front of us on the freeway came adrift and landed fair in front of our little hire car. Fotunately with a screech of brakes and a rather unflattering swerve we were able to avoid any mishaps. Had there been someone near our rear it would have been a different story. Again I can only praise the Spanish drivers and there ability to correctlydrive on multi lane freeways had a huge contribution to the avoidance of an accident.

When we used the internet to book our Hotel in Toledo we were warned “Please ring in advance for instructions to find the hotel if coming by road”. Well we plugged the hotel into the GPS which duly informed us “Warning – part of this journey is by foot ????” Great! we thought. Oh well nothing ventured nothing gained.

The view from our hotel room balcony in Toledo

Following the directions of our navigator, we were taken through the ancient city walls of Toledo and then up and up until we were at the highest point of the city, our hotel (The Carlos V) was only meters away. We went down some narrow one way streets and around corners that to us Aussies was quite out of character with city roads that we were used to in Aus. Not even the previous Spanish cities that we had been in could quite compete with  the awesome narrow lanes and one way streets of the old city of Toledo.

Well we new where out hotel was but there was no way we could get to it in our hire car so off we set looking for  a car park. Car parks are a premium wherever you are in Spain. First one we found was full. The second one, an underground park, had some available spaces. So having parked the car we set of on foot with our luggage for the 250 meter walk to the hotel. Looking aorund as we walked, we had already fallen in love with this unique old city. It just felt different to all the other Spanish cities that we had visited, “Something Special” about it.

So we checked in as quickly as possible so we could  venture out into the streets and have a look around.

We bought a ticket for the “tourist train” to do a tour of the old city and get our bearings. Well what a parade of gob smacking vision we were confronted with.

I will let the photos speak for themselves.  In any tour of Spain, Toledo should be a high priority on any tourists list of places to see.

After a night in Toledo, it was less than an hours drive to Madrid, so we arrived mid morning. We had organised to drop the hire car off then get a cab to our hotel. Well Madrid is a very large city but we were eventually able to find the Hertz shop front, but of course there was no obviouls parking so that created some issues, finding an underground car park, walkin to Hertz, then finding out the correct car park that they use then moving the car, returning with our luggage and then getting a taxi to our hotel. To add to the frustration the Taxi driver was hopeless (but a nice guy) and we ended up having to walk the last 100 m to our hotel despite the fact that it was a large and well known establishment. He went up a one way street too far, and it would have taken another 5 km to get back to the hotel.

People had warned us, Madrid is so so, Barcelona is better. Well maybe it was the fact that the weather was now on the improve with warm sunny days, but we loved Madrid. The activity in the city squares and the bars and restaurants were endless. Even a proposition from a working girl (while Chris was in a shop out of sight) added to the colour. Once again we had scored spectacularly with the ad hock booking of our hotel accomodation and ended up in the center of the action. You could not have been closer to the old center of the city if you tried.

We were in Madrid for a total of 3 nights, 2.5 days. So we bought a two day tourist bus pass and used them to great effect. In reality we could have walked to most of the major tourist attractions from our hotel but the buses are excellent when you want to have a spell from walking and catch a ride to the next attraction.

Yours Truly having a chat with the invisible man –

We visited the Museo Del Prado and a couple of other famous galleries and were  in awe of some of the classic artists such as Rembrandt, Raphael, Goya, Cezanne and many many others.

Another notable attraction was the 28oo room Royal Palace of which we were able to see about 20 rooms.

We were within 24 hours of catching the plane home and had started to skite to one another about the terrible stories of pick pockets that we had been warned about from people who had visited Spain. Even the tourist blurb had warned us of the  intention of certain members of the Spanish Community who will do everything in their power to separate you from your valuables.

Well, with great embarrassment, it happened, while trying to  board the tourist bus, a team of pick pockets (three, two women and a man) worked in concert to separate Chris and I then cause confusion on the bus entry to pick my pocket. Four credit cards, 25o Euros, 120 Aus and drivers license, gone in a flash. At the time of course, we were unaware, only finding out about 40 min later when we got off the bus. The perpetrators never actually got on the bus, it was simply a guise.

To their credit and on account of this being a fairly normal occurrence in Spain, our hotel was fantastic. In particular the concierge who had all the numbers at hand and solved the language problem by ensuring that we were talking to English speaking operators to cancel our cards.

The concierge also organised for us to report the incident to the police over the phone. The bell boy was then instructed to take us to the Western Union bureau to collect our Qantas cash that had been organised to be available in 5 minutes over the phone. (BIG BIG tick to Qantas Cash). The bell boy was then to guide us to the police station to finalize and sign our incident report. Waiting at the police station we realized that we were not the only victims as there were others there for the same issue. Particularly a couple who we would have thought would not be victims of pick pockets as they were from Portugal, just across the border.

Once over the initial shock, and all credit cards cancelled without any dubious charges against them we relaxed, accepted the fact that it was really no big deal and not let it spoil our holiday. It would have been a little different, I guess, had they stolen our passports, but we always kept them, locked safely away in our room safe and only carried photo copies. Organizing documents to board the plane home in less than 24 hours would have been a testing problem.

Australia bound we had time to reminisce our wonderful month holiday visiting our grand children in UAE and travelling the unique and wonderful country of Jordan and then moving on to visit the classic tourist sites of Spain.

SENSATIONAL!