Smashing Priceless Glassware

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We get up at 7am, and we're in the breakfast room as soon as it opens at 8am. We're the only people here which is probably not too surprising. Seven am on a Sunday morning, which is effectively the same as 5am on a Sunday morning anywhere else in the world, is probably a time that most Spanish people haven't experienced very often. It's 9am when we get to the station but all the shops are still closed. We need to change trains in Madrid, and we have to queue up there to get our luggage scanned. When we get to the front of the queue we're told that we're in the wrong place, and that trains to Toledo leave from a different part of the station. The helpful railway official we ask for directions tells us that the station is very confusing and that the architect who designed it was "loco". The main waiting area is full of seats which look like they've been taken out of a 747. Issy thinks that they're massage chairs and is very disappointed when she finds out that they aren't.

We get on the train for our short half hour trip to Toledo. The Toledo station is very old and dark, and all the windows are stained glass. If you woke up here and didn't know where you were you could be forgiven for thinking that you were in a church.

Our hotel is a converted old mansion right next to the old city wall. We walk through a large courtyard garden to reception. The courtyard is full of pools and fountains, and the inside of the hotel is decorated with antique furniture. We feel like we've walked into a museum; we paid entrance fees to visit houses like this in Ronda and Seville. Our room is on the second floor and is really two rooms - a bedroom and a living room. We also have two outdoor areas. One of them is a balcony overlooking the main courtyard garden and the other one is a massive roof terrace about the size of our house back home. It has two sitting areas, one of which overlooks the pool, and a third area with an umbrella and sun lounges. Issy looks very happy; she tells me that she likes our hotel.

As we start to unpack I hear a loud noise and run into the living room to find broken glass all over the floor. Issy says that she moved the coffee table without realising that there were glasses on it, and they both fell off. I look at what's left of the glasses. They have gold all over them and look like they were antiques - strong emphasis on the word "were". We've only been here a few minutes and we've already managed to destroy two pieces of priceless ancient glassware. We need someone to come and sweep up the broken glass, but I'm sure that if I ring reception and tell them what we've done they'll tell us to move to another hotel. I wonder if maybe we should try and sneak out to a supermarket and buy a dustpan and shovel. The receptionist pretends not to be too concerned about our destructive spree. We do notice later however that the replacement glasses are plastic, and I suspect that they might come around tomorrow and replace everything else in the room with plastic as well.

Toledo is built on a hill and is in stark contrast to the pancake flatness of Seville. The city wall goes around the bottom of the hill. The path up the hill turns out to be a series of escalators which look a bit out of place in what we've heard is a very ancient town. There are six escalators in the series. All the down escalators are working, but only three of the up escalators. This is a good example of Murphy's law in action.

We wander through a maze of narrow windy lanes and alleyways. There's no one around and it feels like a ghost town. We reach what seems to be somewhere near the top of the hill and start to walk down the other side. There are now a few more people around, but it's still very quiet. I thought that Toledo would be crawling with noisy tourists. It's now late on Sunday afternoon, so we wonder if maybe most people who come here are day trippers from Madrid and they've all gone home. I hope that that's the reason and not that someone hasn't told us some deep dark secret about what happens here late on Sunday afternoons.

We go into the Monasterio de San Juan de Los Reyes, or Monastery of St John of the Kings, which we read was built in the late 15th century by the Catholic Monarchs. They originally intended it to be the place where all the monarchs would be buried, but they changed their minds after they reconquered Granada. It is now a Franciscan Monastery, and has a cloisters on two levels around a garden courtyard. The church attached to it is massive. After a while we notice that everyone else seems to have left, and we are now the only people here. This is a worrying trend. Issy says that she thinks that they're trying to lock up for the day and haven't realised that we're still here. She suggests that maybe we should leave quickly or we might get locked in. I start to think that Toledo is very spooky.

We get some drinks from the hotel minibar and have them on our balcony. The drinks are in glass bottles; we handle them very carefully.

We have dinner in an idyllic setting in the hotel's garden courtyard. My grilled octopus is to die for, and right up there on the list of the best meals I've ever eaten. We lie on the sun lounges on our roof terrace, under a very starry sky. I tell Issy that I think I can see the southern cross. On reflection this appears a tad unlikely, and she perhaps unsurprisingly responds that she thinks that I may have had just one too many cervezas. Toledo doesn't feel quite so spooky any more. I hope they're not just trying to lull us into a false sense of security.

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