Toledo Tour

One of our tours we booked before we left for Spain, was a tour of Toledo. So early one morning we walked to the little tour office, along with a few other tourists, met our lovely multi-lingual tour guide, and boarded a big bus.  This was our first exposure to a tour done in many languages....English, Spanish, and French.  We are not fans of this multi-language experience and here's why.....It makes us crazy.  You're focused on what sounds like gibberish, waiting to hear English. Since we're in the minority, when she began speaking English, the others in the group began chatting among themselves, making it difficult to hear what she's saying.  With the accent, the English isn't really clear either. Oh well, live and learn....we'll make sure to ask before we book another tour that might possibly be given in more than one language.

But off we go.  Toledo is about an hour away from Madrid.  The bus makes a stop at a roadside business just outside of Toledo.  Of course there are plenty of souvenirs to purchase (which we bought NONE), food and drink to purchase, and a clean toilet to use. We did have this photo op.....

Then we're off to the lovely little town of Toledo. There's a church with a painting by El Greco, The Burial of the Count of Orgaz. I don't think we fully appreciated this work of art. Our guide did a wonderful job of explaining the piece, but after you've seen all the art in Italy, this just looked crude to us.  We are not art aficionados, so you should not take our word for this. El Greco is the father of the Spanish Renaissance, but again, when you hold it up against the Italian Renaissance, it comes up very short.

The streets are narrow and there once was a very large Jewish population. They are responsible for much of the development in the area.  Too bad there are no longer Jews in the area.  They were run out of town years ago....burned, tortured, and murdered....but they left behind lovely tiles embedded in the streets.

There's also a lovely villa that has been turned in to a museum. The artist and his wife did not have any children or heirs, so they left everything to the town. Interesting art, not our style.

The views are lovely.....and there are plenty of tour buses.  I wish that I was able to get a photo of the multi-story escalator leading up to the town. It was an engineering feat!

And of course there's a lovely cathedral....

And then there was the synagog that was turned in to a church.....

The town of Toledo is very interesting and we could have spent an entire day here.

On the way back to Madrid, there was a stop where we saw how they take little cuts of metals and embed them in pendants, etc.  We took a quick view and then hit the toilet and bought a bottle of water before we loaded back up on the bus.

Once again, not loving the tours........