To Toledo and Back

After saying goodbye to my hostel friends at the free breakfast consisting of baguette, honey, and steamed milk, I made my way by bus to Toledo. It is a sizeable town, so I expected to find connections to Córdoba and other locations to the south. To my surprise, however, Toledo turned out to be a complete dead end, with transportation to Madrid and nowhere else.

It was sunny and warm for the first time in weeks, and climbing up to the city walls from the bus station made me appreciate the great defensive location of the city, surrounded on two sides by steep cliffs of the Tajo river, and on the other two by multiple stone walls. None of the defenses worked to keep out the tourists, however, as they poured through various city gates and scattered into the labyrinth of narrow streets inside the walls.

Even though I have already seen many walled cities on this trip, Toledo was probably the grandest and most impressive of them all. I wandered around the narrow passageways and past hundreds of shops selling swords, knives, and other souvenirs of Toledo´s ancient might. I didn´t stay long, however, and returned to Madrid the same afternoon.