Spanish Tales: Madrid and Toledo

After a very civilized, 12 hour flight from Lima to Amsterdam, during which we were forced to drink quite good wine, eat a couple of tasty meals and stretch out almost vertically to sleep, we reached Amsterdam. This was a just an overnight – a complementary stay at the Marriot and a rijstafel (Indonesian dish with rice and lots of different side dishes). We felt like royalty!!

Next day a 3 hour flight to Madrid. Changing countries so quickly really allows us to be fully aware of culture changes – and weather changes which have wreaked havoc on both our sinuses, but that’s information we’ll keep to ourselves! Suffice it to say that going from dry, desert Peru to humid Holland to hot/a little bit dry – and then humid Spain does strange things to one’s passages.

Madrid is a big city – an interesting one with 3 wonderful museums, incredible historical buildings and any number of quaint places to stop for tapas and wine – but a big city nonetheless. We both prefer Toledo and Seville, small cities where we have had unique hotels right in the old city and have walked –and walked, and walked, and walked - you get the idea – everywhere.

But Madrid, in addition to the Royal Palace shown here, does have the Prado and two other world class museums, and our hotel, though modest, was within walking distance of all of them and everywhere we wanted to go. The Prado specializes in European works up to the start of the Impressionist period, with particular emphasis on those of Spanish and Dutch artists from their empire. Lots of Velasquez, Goya and El Greco’s; the latter is especially neat, since he seems almost modern in some of his quasi-impressionistic paintings of agonized saints. Having said that, we got burned out on virgins and martyrs after a bit, and were glad to visit the more modern Thyssen museum after a fortifying lunch – did I mention they serve wonderful snacks (tapas), wine and beer at a lot of really cool little places? Thyssen was a Swiss art collector who gave his works to the city of Madrid at the behest of his Spanish wife (Miss Spain, at one time), and had many wonderful Renoirs and other Impressionistic masters. We may be Philistines, but we sure can relate to and enjoy more such works than St Anthony and his lions, over and over again! Life is nice in Spain: sleep late, tour the city, snack for lunch, tour some more, come back to the room for a rest, and then a late dinner.

A special dinner was at Botin’s, purported to be the oldest restaurant in the world and a hangout of Hemingway. In any case, its specialty is roast suckling pig, which was by far the best we have ever tasted. A friend of mine had given us some advice on Spanish wine, and here I indulged myself in a (full!!) bottle of Ribera del Duelo – a very nice red. Somehow it doesn’t seem so sinful to drink that much wine if you can walk it off during the wandering mile + back to the hotel.

Toledo, which is just a ½ hour train ride from Madrid and which we visited for just an overnight, was built high on a rock as a fortress and used as such by Moors and Christians alike. Our hotel was built into a wall of the old city, and is itself a beautiful combination of fortress, palace and garden. Lots of stairs, but willing help to lug our bags! We’re traveling with 3 large bags plus 2 carry-ons, and we’ve worked out a system to keep from getting killed lugging them. In this case we parked 2 at the left luggage in Madrid and went with the smallest one. After leaving that at the reception we set off to explore, hiking up and up narrow streets, using a combination of the map and instinct to navigate the narrow, twisting, quixotically marked passageways. It is with some regret that I report Susan quickly began doubting my fabled navigational skills, and even dared to use the “lost” word in a tone of asperity. I soldiered on and reached our first “find” - a place where map and location seemed to concur. It was an ancient mosque, originally built around the turn of the millennium (yeah, the 1st one) and then converted to a Christian church when the land was re-conquered from the Moors around the 11th century.

By the way, this conversion of older cultures has been a recurring theme in our travels so far: in Peru we saw how in most places the Incan temples had been torn down to provide building blocks for the Christian churches and palaces, and had gloried in the untouched splendor of Machu Picchu. Here in Spain there was a much happier mixture of the two cultures, with many Moorish influences retained or even built into the “new” palaces (ones built, for example, around the time of Rey Peter the Cruel, in the late 1300’s). More on this theme later, when we get to the Alcazar and other such wonderful edifices.
This mosque/church was under renovation so we couldn’t see the whole thing, but the archeological dig around the building was like looking through centuries of history. Then off we went further up the hill to the Alcazar, the fortress which had protected the city for almost a thousand years – but unfortunately also closed for renovation since 2002! Shame, because not only did it promise to hold some beautiful sights, but had been a bastion of Franco republicanism during the Civil War. Our guide book said the room of the commander had been preserved as it was at the end of the fighting, one of the last memories of that period kept alive by a Spain which would prefer to forget that part of its past. From there we wandered (my navigating, Susan carping) on to the cathedral. This is an incredibly beautiful neo gothic construction, one whose immensity overwhelms you when you are inside it and look forward and up. It seems even bigger than Notre Dame, but unlike that church which stands alone on the Isle de la Cite in Paris, this cathedral is so completely surrounded by neighboring houses that it is only on entering that you realize its size. It is richly decorated with innumerable (OK, they probably could be counted, but we didn’t) altars and works of art – lots of saints and pietas. And then after a nice lunch, on to El Greco’s house and museum. This place may or may not really have been his house, but we missed it anyway. Yup! Under renovation! Although we couldn’t get to see these two of the city, we saw many others – to include a synagogue which was build in the 12th century and most of which is still in tact. This was when Christians, Arabs, and Jews all lived harmoniously together, before Ferdinand and Isabella decided it was easier to expel the Jews than pay them the money they owed them, starting their long period of expulsion from Spain. That was then; this is now! Pity! In all, we really fell in love with Toledo, with its curious winding streets and neat little plazas.

We didn’t really even mind all the climbing, especially after we happened on a series of 6 escalators that ran from the foot of the hill to its top – it was right next to our hotel, and had we turned left instead of right on our first motion of exploring, we would have been saved the hike – but then missed the other adventures. In the end we were glad to use it. Especially with another great meal at our hotel waiting for us! Next off to Seville.