Yesterday we went to the town of Toledo. It’s about an hour and a half south of Madrid by bus, or 30 minutes by train, or a straight hour in a car. We took the Metro to the train station and then took the 30 minute train. All-in-all, from our “piso,” it was about an hour of travel.
Our train left from Atocha station at 9am, which, for Spaniards, is still early. (The 10am bus was sold out).
I tried to nap on the train (Tonya and I have been sick and fatigued) and got to thinking about Toledo. Toledo is in La Mancha, an area of Spain perhaps best known for Miguel de Cervantes’ tail, Don Quijote. (I’ve seen it as “Quixote” all my life with an “X” but the story is from La Mancha and they spelled it with a “J” there.)
I’m a bit of a sword and sorcery geek, and so I’ve always loved the story of Don Quijote, a man out of his time, tilting at windmills simply because it’s the right thing to do. The story celebrates elevated ideals in a less-than-elevated world. Throughout the story, Don Quijote sees the world through chivalry-colored glasses to right wrongs and correct injustices, even though he lives in an area called “La Mancha” which literally means “The Stain.” Don Quijote’s view of the world is a good thing–I find it inspiring. When you get to Toledo, it’s like you step into the story of Don Quijote itself.
The train station isn’t modern-looking. Instead, it’s styled like an old brick building. It has a large clock tower and a mediterranean-tiled roof. We stepped through the station and out onto the street. We’d purchased a tour of Toledo where we would be led by an app through the city to see important landmarks and other buildings and items of historical significance. Tonya and I debated whether we should get a taxi into Toledo while we checked our tour app to see how far away our first stop was.
“20 minutes,” Tonya said.
Our children insisted, unanimously, “Let’s walk!”
Now, I know this might seem like a small thing, but we all know that by small and simple things, great things come to pass. Since arriving in Spain, our kids have given Laman and Lemuel a run for their money when it comes to complaining about things. As we’ve been reading Nephi etc. at the turn of the year I’ve been thinking, “But we’ve just lived this…” Except in reverse since we came from the promised land. Anyway…
It was definitely the right idea to walk. It doesn’t take long (in European walking terms) before the road out of the train station curves and you find this amazing castle-topped view of Toledo:
There are some modern touches, sure, but seriously this looks like walking into the story of Don Quijote itself. So cool.
We all took pictures, Natalie included, who kept remarking about how cool it all was.
From our parenting perspective, this was a huge win. We were 5 to 10 minutes in and our kids were still excited. But it’s hard not to be with views like that. Really cool. You cross that bridge into Toledo and that tower has an actual portcullis–the gate that drops down and blocks entry to the city. I could imagine guards posted there, monitoring the comings and goings at the city.
After the bridge tower, there’s a wide cobble-stoned path between you and the first buildings of the city that circles most of Toledo. Cars travel on that path and so we had to wait. It felt anachronistic to see the juxtaposition of modern cars on old cobble-stoned roads.
We crossed the road and followed our path into the city.
Word to the wise about any would-be European travelers. If you’re going to a city with a castle in it, stretch those calves. Castles = fortified = natural defenses = up. There’s a lot of inclined roads, there’s a lot of stairs, and at first we kept taking every single side path to see everything because everything is a castle. It was so cool–one of the castle doorways even had a sign saying it was a school. Imagine going to school in a castle built in 1000AD. Eventually though, we decided we would just take the path the app was showing us instead of going up and down every single flight of stairs to see what kind of medieval view we could get. (Lactic acid was building up in my calves bad because I didn’t stretch. UPDATE: My legs still hurt.)
The app tour was interesting. It led us to 10 locations throughout the city. When we arrived at a spot the app pointed us too, it would give us information about the building or historical site. Then, at each location there was a “riddle” (that was a poor translation on the app’s part). It was essentially a little mini-game at each spot. It just asked you to observe things about the place and put them into the app and then it would tell you a local legend loosely related to that area. Most of the local legends were ghosts stories, which was kind of fun in its own way.
I feel like I need to take at least one paragraph to talk about swords. Apparently most movie swords are made in Toledo. There were the usual trinket stores in Toledo that you find in any tourism-heavy town in Spain, but there were a lot, and I mean A LOT more swords than we normally find elsewhere. There were entire stores dedicated solely to selling swords. Getting a sword from Toledo has been on our Europe bucket list for awhile now, and we didn’t quite settle on purchasing one. We plan to go back to get (at least) one later.
On our way to one of the app destinations we decided to stop at a little cafe and grab something to eat. We got smoothies, crepes, gofres (waffles), and a bocadilla which was really just a sandwich with “jamon iberico.” Jamon Iberico literally means “Iberian ham.” It’s this thin-sliced ham that I don’t even know whether it’s cooked or cured or what. I just know it’s delicious. They have these pig legs hanging in the stores everywhere, they put it on this special device for holding pig legs in the restaurants and what not, and they cut a very thin slice to put it on other food or in sandwiches. It’s good stuff.
After that, we kept going. After awhile we saw all these tiles along our path with Hebrew characters.
Some neat things about Toledo, there are a variety of religious cultures there. The tour took us through the Jewish Quarter, to Catholic cathedrals, and even Mosques. Spain has a unique culture I’m still learning about, but at different times it was ruled by Visigothic (Germanic) Christians, Muslims from Northern Africa (the Moors), and then again by Christians during the Reconquista. One of the buildings we visited was a Jewish Synagogue. What was interesting about the building was that it was designed by Muslim architects on land donated by Christians so that Jews could worship. The existence of the building shows that there were pockets of tolerance throughout the history of Toledo. But, largely and unfortunately, this isn’t the story of Toledo.
I’ve been a little aghast as we’ve traveled around Spain about the violent imagery of Christians prevailing over “the Moors” and “the Jews.” It’s a sad legacy that people have done those things in the name of Christ, or in the name of God, or in the name of religion or other ideas. It’s been a learning moment for our kids as they ask things like “but why did Christians do that?”
Instead, I prefer to think about how that Synagogue exists at all. I prefer to think about Don Quijote, and striving for better ideals.
The app tour took us across Toledo which is surrounded by water on three sides. We had two plans when we came to Toledo: 1) the app tour and 2) ziplining.
There’s a little outfit called “Fly Toledo” and we signed up to zipline. Our kids are not the most adventurous–they get that part from me. But I was proud as virtually none of them expressed day-ruining worry about crossing over the river on a zipline. See pictures:
Good pictures all around there. I was a little sad that Natalie’s face is blocked by the strap. She was intentionally putting on a face that was like “I’m so bored” and it was totally classic. I’d have ridden over with one of the little kids, but, ahem… it would have put us over the weight limit. But since Tonya weighs nothing, they let her ride twice with no extra charge with each of the little kids.
After the zipline we visited one more app tour location and then we were done. Except that our return train didn’t leave until 7pm and we had 3 hours to kill.
Again, I want to point out, we’d been walking the whole time and our kids hadn’t started complaining. They were into the Toledo tour, enjoyed zip lining… Basically they were awesome. I can’t say that enough. I was probably the grumpiest person there because my calves were killing me, I was fatigued because I was still feeling a little sick, and we hadn’t really eaten a meal.
We went back to Toledo’s main square, Plaza Zocodover, and charged our phones at the McDonalds–we got a frosty, but no food. We were going to eat after that. But, that plan changed and we went to an “Illusion” (?) museum.
It was odd, and a little quirky, but actually really cool. Our kids had a good time with. Basically, it gave you tons of opportunities to take pictures against these different pieces of wall art to create different optical illusions, like being stuck in an overturned wined glass, or standing on a floating magic carpet, or crossing over a cliff. I wasn’t as present as I wanted to be (hungry? check; sick? check; legs killing me because I didn’t stretch my calves? check) and I was surrounded by kids who were constantly saying “Dad, look” “Dad, take my picture” “Dad, take another picture” “Dad, you should see this!” “Dad, have you seen this?” “Dad, look.”
Somewhere in there I had the thought that if Nephi had the attitude toward “Look” that I was having then 1 Nephi chapters 11 through 14 would probably suck. So I held it together and took some pictures. I’m pretty sure Tonya got more.
After that, we didn’t have time for dinner. We walked out of Toledo and got on the train home. It was a really good day. I just can’t get over how great our kids were the entire day. No one complained about the food (or lack thereof). We walked almost the entire time up and down stairs or up and down hills. I was proud of how resilient they were. That was one of the reasons Tonya and I wanted to do this. We want to be able to look back with our kids and show them “Hey, you did this hard thing. Look at you.”
Even though we weren’t at Toledo long, it has a naturally nostalgic feeling, at least for me. Toledo, with the view of it with the castles and the thoughts I was having about Don Quijote and higher ideals, etc., etc., just got me thinking about what are my higher thoughts? What are the things I strive for? Because Toledo feels like the kind of place where people have fought over and hoped for a great many things.
America is still a young country by comparison, and on the backdrop of Spanish history, it’s clear to me that the U.S. is still deciding what kind of country it wants to be. I hope we don’t decide to be the kind of “Christian” country that cuts off the heads of people with ideas that vary from our own. Instead, I hope we’re more like Don Quijote.
Sorry, didn’t mean to end on a bummer. Toledo’s awesome. If you make it out here, you should visit sometime.
2 Responses
I’m very jealous, this looks awesome. Erin’s Spanish sword is from Toledo, and we’ll have to add this to our list for when we go someday
Wow! Those exhibits were not in Toledo when I was in Spain and the tours were mostly of churchs=es. Makes me want to visit again to see what else is new.