A Night with The Spanish Gestapo

---

Another night on a train, but this was a little more comfortable as the luggage racks and seats doubled-up as what were actually quite comfortable beds. Upon arrival in Madrid, we went for a much-needed shave and freshen up, which went some way to help us get over two nights of sleeping on trains.

The underground system in Madrid was absolutely immaculate, coming only a close second to the one in Singapore (but without all the threats of fines). We got a ten-ticket pack between us and set off to see the sites. We found Madrid very uninspiring, so we ended up looking for something else to do. After a quick check in our books, we decided to travel out to a nearby town called Toledo.

Allan and I did return here again several years later on the day of Allan's wedding. Eva, his new wife, was from Madrid, so that is where the wedding took place and I was invited.

Dumping Madrid and going to Toledo was one of the best things we had ever done. This was a picturesque old town sitting in the remote Spanish hills. Narrow, winding, catacomb streets, a castle and a cathedral with an interior that was out of this world.

The town was full of shops selling all sorts of swords and various other dodgy looking weapons. This reminded us of where we had heard of Toledo before: it was where one of the guys' swords in the film Highlander was made. A little bit of useless trivia there.

The weather was obviously following us from England as it eventually started, so we headed back to Madrid to wait for the train to Lisbon. This journey was a total and complete nightmare. Every seat had been reserved and most of the inter-railers ended up trying to sleep in the corridor. This would not have been too much of a problem, except that these two macho idiots (police, security guards, Nazis, we weren’t sure exactly) got on and proceeded to literally throw people off the train. This continued even after the train started to pull out of the station, but stopped when one girl ended up rolling along the platform and obviously hurting herself. They then proceeded to march up and down the train. Word was passed along ahead of them and when they reached you, they expected you and your back-pack to be against the side of the corridor so that they had a clear path to strut past. We weren’t about to say anything to them since it was safe to assume that they wouldn't let some skinny inter-railer show them any sort of disrespect, and would quite happily beat any of us to a pulp with their batons, rather than risk denting their oh-so-important macho image. Oh I would just love to have met one of those bastards in England.

Needless to say we didn’t get much sleep.

---

Photos

Plaze de Cibeles
The Plaze de Cibeles and the Palacio de Linares

Toledo
The city walls

Toledo
The view of Toledo as you approach

Toledo Cathedral
Probably the most impressive cathedral we have seen (inside that is)