My Shout

Toledo turned out to be a beautiful town, as only was to be expected! We arrived there around midday on the 13th and checked into our first 'hostel', which turned out to be our nicest accommodation so far! The room was very nice and large and featured a rather pleasant balcony out on the street and a very friendly host.

We started with a visit to the Iglesia de Santo Tome, a fairly unsignificant church with an extremely significant painting inside by El Greco. We spent quite a while in there looking at the painting and managed to catch a tourguide explaining how this was one of the four most famous paintings in the world.. of course that sparked a discussion on whether or not it really was. His other three in the top 4 were Mona Lisa, the Nightwatch and a painting by Velazquez (which name has escaped me, as has the El greco one ). Funny how two spanish artists managed to feature

There is a lot of El Greco to be seen in Toledo, including a house museum with a lot of his works which is what we visited next. One thing we have found on our trip is that our Youth Cards actually seem to be paying off as they did on this occassion again, gaining us free entry to the museum!

There are a lot of things to be seen in Toledo and a lot of people are trying to make money off of that.. One of the two synagogues, which is rather small, but still very beautiful inside, costs 1,50 to enter. The other is currently being renovated, so not hope of even entering there. Prices for food and drink seemed higher than Cordoba and Sevilla, which was a little unexpected, but not surprising considering the amount of tourists visiting the town.

The Cathedral was a rather pleasant and lengthy visit. Every little town in Spain has a big cathedral it seems, which is usually its prime attraction. The Cathedral in Toledo was quite worthwhile though, with some very nice artworks inside, from the likes of Breughel, El Greco, Goya, Velazquez and many other big names - undoubtedly not all peacefully obtained! There was also an exhibition of Cardinals' cloaks and treasury items which provided some more interest.

It seems that every night there is something going on in Toledo, probably partially because we were there on the weekend, but also because the Corpus Christi celebrations were starting to heat up. Last night as we were wandering from the river back up the (rather steep and tiring hill) we came across a procession on their way to the cathedral. No big pointy hats at this stage, probably saved for next week, but still an interesting thing to encounter and something we hadn't really expected. While the procession walked up the windy streets on their way to the cathedral, we caught the rather convenient, and very stylishly created, escalators on the side of the mountain! I tell you, there is nothing more handy than escalators on the side of a steep hill.
In the evening we wandered to the cathedral to see where they had ended up and found there was a public performance of traditional dance and music going on. We of course stayed there for a while to watch the singing and dancing that was being put on display for us.

All in all, Toledo has been a very enjoyable experience. Now on to Madrid.

It's certainly been a more relaxed part of our holidays in Seville and Cordoba. Thanks to less tourist attractions, ie buildings etc, we have had a chance to take it a little easier. The weather in Cordoba has been scorching, so we have happily joined in with the locals in their siestas. Pretty much everything is shut from 2 till 5:30 anyway, so not much else to do!

Our first day here, we basically just walked around a lot and managed to cover a grand circle of the town, walking past about 8 or 9 (all beautiful) old churches along the way! Lunch was memorable at a little restaurant called La Lechuga (the lettuce I believe), which had some very nice tapas for us to snack on. We immediately followed that up by going to the local bodega (bar), which served wine straight out of the barrel - they had a whole cellar that we could see in the background as well. The price was of course suitably low at around 75 cents, although it wasn't the finest brew I've ever tasted After our drink at the bar, we jumped to the following extreme, with a visit to the ancient sinagogue just down the road, a tiny little building, but supposedly there are very few left in Spain that are that old. Finally at the end of the day, while wandering on our way back to the hotel, we heard the sounds of flamenco and followed them to find a show being put on. Of course we had to pay, but it was a great experience to just sit and watch for over an hour!

Yesterday we made our visit to the Mezquita, the lovely old mosque that underwent numerous changes over the centuries and was finally converted to a cathedral in 1600 or so. Very beautiful place to spend some time. As in all major attractions there are a lot of tourguides showing people around and explaining things in their language. It becomes confusing sometimes when the tourguides are standing near the pulpit and all the tourists are in the pews - they really do look like preachers! It was extremely hot yesterday, so we spent a considerable time in our hotel room siestaing till it became a little cooler. It is far more pleasant to wander around in the evenings, so we have generally been doing that most nights till past midnight.

Today we visited the Alcazar here in Cordoba, which is a lot smaller than the one in Seville, but still quite enjoyable.. There are also a lot of Roman remains here in Cordoba, which makes for a somewhat different scenery to Seville. For lunch we revisited La Lechuga, the restaurant we went to on the first day because we had enjoyed it so much.

Tomorrow we head to Toledo very early in the morning.

The hotel in Seville proved to be quite the quaint little place to stay, complete with knight's armour, spears, swords and a nice dark and moody interior in the waiting room. The location was convenient, in the heart of the touristy gothic quarters, only a minute's walk from the Real Alcazar and the huge Cathedral! We visited the Alcazar on the first day and would have to count that as one of the highlights of the trip thus far. The mosaic interiors and the amazing gardens were a great way to aclimatise (that spelling doesn't seem right) to the rather hot weather!

I'll have to keep the rest of this entry short, because internet time is running out.

We had some better luck with food in Seville, scoring beautiful paellas on our second day, which are so far the best food we have had! The prices were generally a lot cheaper than Barcelona too, especially for wine, which we have found as cheap as 80 cents a glass, not much more expensive than water!

We had a nice flamenco experience also at La Carboneria, a bar where people from the audience do the dancing - probably not the best quality performance, but still a whole lot of fun!

The Cathedral was a great visit. I finally realised that our youth cards can be used for student discounts, which saved us about 13 Euros! We walked to the top of the Giralda as well, for some nice views of the city, although we were rather exhausted when we got there! Fortunately the climb doesn't involve steps, but rather 35 ramps, because some person who it was built for took his horse up the top!

Well, I'll leave it at that for now. We are in Cordoba at the moment, but I'll tell you more about that later!

Peter