You Spain Me Right Round baby, Right Round..: Totally Toledo

My next Spanish adventure brought me to the old capital of Spain, Toledo. The city served as the main capital of Castile (and most of Spain at the time) until about 1516 before it was moved to Madrid. Of course no morning bus ticket is complete without witnessing a minor skirmish-turned-heated-screaming-battle in line at the station. A young girl tried to cut in line and the mom and elder Spanish woman had some choice Spanish words for each other. The fun didn't stop until the bus finally left the station while the mom followed our group saying she was going to call the police. Officially woken up at this point, my friend Christina and I watched the Spanish country side from the comfort of our bus window seats. We arrived in this medieval city at the bottom of a mountainside that was exhausting to even look at. There is a good viewpoint of the city across the river so after quickly trying to navigate through hilly streets that would put San Francisco to shame, we decided to split a cab. And we're glad we did because that trek would have taken hours and we got some great shots of the city!

Ugh. #imatourist

Toledo is known for its beautiful, narrow streets and alleys. Sometimes it is almost dizzying how narrow some of the streets are, but for the most part they were all really beautiful. Then of course you have the Cathedral which supposedly has an ornately decorated mosaic of sorts inside but we didn't see any of this because entrance to the church was 7 EUROS! Say whaaaat?? We politely declined and chose instead to walk the streets and get lost a little.

So despite not paying exorbitant prices to enter a cathedral (which are so rare in Spain to begin with) we still got a good view of the exterior of it.

From here our stomachs guide us to what seemingly looks like a harmless Spanish place to eat. Or so we thought..

The Fat Bell. What could possibly go wrong? Answer: everything.

We were ushered inside by a very polite Spanish hostess and were pleasantly satisfied with ourselves for having chosen such an authentic place to eat at. Then the waiter came. Correction, the insanely perturbed hombre with a receding hairline and apparently nothing to look forward to ever. Now customer service in Spain is not exactly top notch to begin with (ahem non existent), but this guy decided to take that to a whole new level. While browsing through the menu, Christina had happened to ask, completely in Spanish, what he would recommend as an entree. After examining her in silence for about 15 seconds, he blurted out one of the dishes that was barely audible then proceeded to glare at us until we ordered. That was the only word we heard from him the whole time. After tossing silverware and throwing the pitcher of water on the table, we were only too happy to not have the luxury of his presence anymore. Unfortunately after the lunch it was necessary to ask where the restroom was and, true to form, his response was a curt point of his finger to a random corner of the place. He then spun right around and marched off. All lack of courtesy on the server's part aside, the lunch itself proved to be another test on our lives. We ordered the paella which is very similar to fried rice but with other meats and seafood inside as well. This particular paella had lots of different kinds of meats and seafood, but the problem was it had too much of the meats and seafood. Every bone in that chicken's body must have been poured into this rice because you could not take one bite from it without snagging your tooth on some foul's body part. After spending nearly 30 minutes trying to separate the bones from our rice (and not choke) I was only all too ready to devour my salmon. In my haste, I did not realize that yes fish have bones too and took a massive bite right out of the center of it. It felt a little like sticking a small pine cone in your mouth. Needless to say, after this ordeal we discovered a new translation for La Campana Gorda, the lunch of death.

"Are those bones??"

"Yes, yes they are."

As if this weren't enough to terrify us of the new city, as we walked out of the restaurant and down the street we began to hear dim music in one of the alleys. As we investigated the source of this eerie blend of halloween music meets evil flute player, we found it emanating from a closed shop window right next to life-size Freddy Krueger and hunchback statues. The hunchback was a cross between Igor, the servant helping to create Frankenstein, and that creepy old man who ferries you across a river in the 15th century. So naturally we took a picture with them.

After this odd turn of events, we headed down to the Synagogue at the end of the city. Toledo was and is known for having nicely blended Islam, Christianity and Judaism peacefully. There are relics of each of the religions all around the city which make it fascinating to walk through. This synagogue had awesome architecture on the inside and a mini art exhibit of Hebrew works of poems and paintings. Each drawing had a ton of symbols that were a little difficult to understand through the Spanish/Hebrew explanations but most of them were very nice.

We ended up running into friends exploring the city too and had some coffee and walked around. The city was especially great because besides having great architecture, cathedrals, culture, etc. it's on the side of a valley with a river running through it. So we were able to take some nice shots of some landscape as well.

AND THEN, OF COURSE, why does anyone go Toledo? For the swords. Every other shop has "hand crafted" swords that are fully available for purchase. The best/scariest thing about this is that it is a popular item for parents to buy their children. The wood swords are suitable I suppose, but I just don't really see the utility of having your children run around wielding metal swords outside with their friends unsupervised. However this does not deter me from REALLY WANTING one regardless. I will have to make a return trip just to buy a sword.