Holy Toledo!

What would you say if I told you we visited an entire city that’s a UNESCO world heritage site? We also visited the capital of the visigoth empire and the location of the Spanish royal court in the 16th century. And a town with ties to Cervantes (and his man of La Mancha, don Quixote), and the artist El Greco. And also a community with 3 distinct cultural influences (Christian, Muslim, and Jewish), plus Roman ruins, and a reputation for damascene blade production.

Yes, Toledo has it all!

Located just southwest of Madrid, this old hilltop city — nestled by the Tagus River within fortified walls — was our homebase for 2 weeks.

It is a labyrinth of teeny, narrow, cobbled carriage ways, broken up by little terraced treed plazas and sweepingly large churches and synagogues.

Most people visit for a day from Madrid, so we can say that over our half a month, we wrung it dry of all its attractions. From monasteries and cathedrals…

to little museums (including Manchego cheese and ancient dungeons)…

to tourist activities (like the Turkish bath and ziplining over the Tagus River)…

climbing around an old Roman Circus (and dipping into the municipal swimming pool next door)…

and steeping ourselves in military history…

and modern art…

and finding all the secret escalators that climb from the river up to town…

we found a lot to do!

Mostly, the main attraction is the city itself. The brick, stone, and tile canyons are nearly irresistible for aimless wandering. (Thank goodness, by the way, for dry heat. Although it was over 100 degrees every day of our stay, it was more bearable here than the sauna of Barcelona.)

By the time we left, we could mostly find our way a fair number of places (and there were some places we could get to by multiple routes!). Oh — and we played tag in a bull fighting arena and accidentally tried to trespass on a military training base (and almost a locked psychiatric hospital) and watched geese eat fish under a water wheel and ran through a 15-minute thunder storm and ate churros and chocolate under a wisteria canopy with locals and collected flower petals after they were thrown over a bride and groom.