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Published: April 12th 2006
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Toledo
Here is our castle...from the outside So I finally got the bill for our little Leon experience...the grand total in US currency $645.72...divided by four $161ish...not too bad when it is divided, but still a bit painful.
OK, so I missed a city...Toledo.
Toledo was a very neat city, once again history. Sarah and I were coming from the beautiful Salamanca while Alyssa and Blair were coming from the capital, Madrid. We had heard from our Israeli friends about this cool hostel that was in a CASTLE...and yes oh yes, was it amazing. First of all it required us hiking up an incredibly steep hill...with our packs and we didn´t even know if there we could get accomodations there...so after sweating our way to the top, we found out we could. Plus it was really cheap and really nice. They even had recycling and lights that were motion censored, keeping the energy down, very chulo (cool) as they say here. The inside had been all renovated but the long hallways, lots of rooms and then large halls still made the place feel like a castle. Because it was ontop of a hill, away from the rest of the city, they had all the amenities you could
Toledo
Here is our castle...from the outside want, free internet, food, and really horrible coffee...like worse than the instant coffee I´ve bought... The city though is so different, it is surrounded on three sides by a river, that has incised about 90 meters, creating a natural mote/barrier and then the original city is built on this hill, which the river moves around. The streets are all cobblestone or laid with granite brick and the buildings are as close as can be, allowing a small car to pass through with about one foot on either side...if you´re walking down, you had to find some doorway or alley to step into. The city though has been home to large populations of Jews, Muslims and Catholics and at that simultaneously and peacefully in the past. So as you´re wandering through these narrow streets, up and down hills, you come across many different cultures. It is quite a tourist place though, so we were running into large highschool groups from Spain and France buying Medieval gear, swords and all...and there are shops filled with knight suits and anything else you can think of. But we spent three nights there and one evening found ourselves at a Cuban Restaurant and Blair ordered
Toledo
Toledo´s narrow streets fruta temprana (fruit of the season) and he came out with an orange and apple on a plate...not quite what we were expecting and my soup of the house, resembled the packets of Campbell´s noodle soup with a hardboiled egg thrown in. But nonetheless, we did get to watch a good fútbol game while we ate, so that was fine, but we were the only people in the restaurant... What else, oh yes, Marzapan, Toledo was the inventors of this stuff...almond deserts...yum yum...but it is expensive, so at least that kept us away a bit.
From Toledo we went to Granada, where we currently are...and this place is really wonderful. It is still further south, in the provence of Andalucía and I finally feel like we´re in Spain...there are orange trees on the streets, a huge North African influence and flamenco dancing. Our first hostel was an experience...we got nervous about the weekend and booked ahead and ended up in a junker. The place was once again up a hill, but we took a bus with our packs, but the building was undergoing a lot of construction and just dingy to begin with...so there´s dust everywhere, we hike up
Toledo
Toledo´s narrow streets to the fourth floor and find our room dirty from the last people in it, smelly and hair everywhere...the toilet doesn´t flush and the lock to the bathroom is a coat hanger McGuiver device...so we decided we were hightailing our booties out of there to someplace else better. Well we split up in two´s to find some new places...got ourselves separated/lost for a few hours and by the time I finally met up with the girls, they had canceled our reservations for the next two nights, gotten into it with the owner and moved us to a better room... So in the end it worked out just fine and we´re in a much better place now that is at the bottom of that hill.
But yesterday we went to the Alhambra, which is on top of that hill, and it is beyond amazing. It is an old Muslim palace that was later taken over by the Catholics after the Inquisition, but the Moorish architecture was still kept in place...I cannot even describe it. When I get my pictures up, they will have to do all the talking, because it is so intricate and so incredible. It outweighs what we
Cuban Dinner
Here you can see my chicken noodle soup and Blair´s seasonal fruit, which consisted of a whole apple and orange saw in Salamanca on those buildings...and it is inside this huge reddish building up on the hill, that doesn´t look like much, but you go in and it is breathtaking. This is once again a major tourist attraction, a world hertiage site in fact, so we had to work ourway through tour groups and then later laugh as they all posed for picture after picture after picture after picture (you get the hint). But speaking of pictures, I took close to a 100 there and my memory card is full...so once I get that taken care of, I will get those up. But Granada also has a ton of college students so there are people everywhere, besides the tourists. And there are small shops filled with North African jewlery, blankets, clothes...a lot you could spend money on. We are planning to buy a skirt, or something fancier for our FLAMENCO show tonight... I really cannot wait. We got cheap tickets too...€5.
So today we are wandering about, doing things more solo and then off to the show tonight. Tomorrow we´re headed to Marbella, instead of Cadíz which was booked so we changed destinations, but Marbella is still a beach
More of Toledo
Attempting to capture the Medieval feel... town and we are going to just relax for a few days before Seville and Santa Semana. I am really excited to see all the festivities for Santa Semana, it just seems like such an immense celebration in every city we´re been to... I think that is all for now. I will add pictures in Marbella, this place cannot find my camera.
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