Toledo

This morning, we woke up around 7:30 to leave Madrid for Toledo by 9. The drive to Toledo was only about an hour and a half.  As soon as we got there we went on walking tour through the city.  My favorite place on the tour was the convent because we learned a lot about the history of Queen Isabel and how she came to power.  The way I understood the story is that Isabel’s brother was the king of Spain and he had had a wife for about 10 years and they hadn’t been able to have a child.  The way the tour guide said it was “Su pene no funcionó”.  So the king divorced his wife and married again and this wife got pregnant…with someone else’s child.  So then he was dying and he had no heir so he changed the law that said there could not be a queen of Spain and Isabel became the queen.  

 Something else we learned that I thought was pretty cool is that there are two places that are thought to be where marzipan was first made.  One is like Northern Germany or something like that and the other is Toledo.  It’s said that the nuns at one of the convents in Toledo need to cook something to eat but all they had was sugar and almonds and when they mixed it together it reminded them of bread dough so they called it maza pan which is bread dough in Spanish.  I did get to try a piece at one of the most famous Mazapan stores in Toledo and I actually really liked it.

Another little fun fact is that the flag of Toledo is really really bright fuchsia and in Spanish it’s pronounced fuck-sia.

That night I went out with six other people from the group.  We first went to a nice restaurant and shared tapas and sangria.  We didn’t really know what to order so we asked our waiter, Esteban to pick four things that he thought we should try and he picked so really incredible food for us.  We had a ton of chorizo and potatoes.  It was a very good meal and priced well too.  50 euros divided by seven of us.

After dinner, we took a walk around the city to see it at night.  We ended up walking up this hill that was more of a residential area than the city. At first we were a little worried that we might not be in the best area of the city, but then we came across a group of women sitting outside eating dinner together.  We stood and talked to these women for about 30 minutes and they let us try a little bit of their food.  It was really interesting to hear about their lives and why they love Toledo so much. Most of them had lived in Toledo their whole lives and they are completely content with never leaving.  But of course, it’s such a beautiful city, I feel like if I lived there, I would be pretty happy to stay too.

Hasta Luego!