Adventures in Spain: Day Trips from Madrid: Toledo and Segovia

Hola Todos!

I just had my second free weekend in Salamanca. Instead of taking the bus trip with most of the JMU group to Valencia (I’ll be living there in three weeks, so I wanted to see a different part of Spain), a friend and I decided to plan out own trip. We took a bus to Madrid Friday afternoon and got a room in a hostel for Friday and Saturday night. Rather than stay in Madrid the whole weekend, we took day trips to nearby Toledo and Segovia. It was an awesome weekend, but it almost got off to a bad start!

My friend Sara, who I was traveling with, had class until one. We booked our bus to Madrid for two thinking that would give us more than enough time to get to the bus stop. We did not count on the fact that Sara’s madre would insist on feeding her lunch before we left. We had planned to meet at the plaza at 1:35 so we could walk to the bus station. I got there at 1:30 to be safe, and then waited for Sara to show up. I wasn’t surprised that he wasn’t there right on time, but when it got to be 1:45 and she still was nowhere to be found, I started to worry. Finally at 1:50 I saw her running down the street to meet me. She was here, but by this point we didn’t have time to walk to the bus station. Luckily, not two minutes later an empty cab drove by. We jumped in the cab and made it to the bus station with about a minute to spare. Crisis averted.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t our only transportation issue on Friday. After arriving in Madrid we got lost on the Madrid train system for almost two hours. As we tried to find the stop that would get us to the city center and our hostel, we kept getting off at stations in the suburbs. These stations were not unlike Dunn Loring or Vienna metro, and as much as I enjoyed seeing these Spanish equivalents of NOVA, I was happy when we finally got off at the correct station inside the city.

Most of Friday night, we wandered around Madrid, occasionally stopping for tapas and a drink at various cafes. We came across a beautiful cathedral that we followed some people into. The interior was white and constructed in a gothic style, and the ceilings had bright, geometric paintings. To both my excitement and embarrassment, there was also a mass in session. I’ve been hoping to attend a mass at one of the beautiful churches or cathedrals I’ve seen because I think it would be an interesting experience. Walking in on this one was cool because this enormous cathedral was packed with people, and off to the sides priests were holding confession right in the middle of mass. I was a little guilty, though, that I, and so many other tourists, were invading and disrupting the holy time of so many people who actually attend the mass at the cathedral regularly. For that reason, I was happy when we left.

This was my first time staying in a hostel, and while I definitely prefer the comfort and privacy of a hotel, it was a great way to save some money this weekend. Since we spent almost no time in the hostel except to sleep, it wasn’t too bad. Actually, aside from the fact that towels weren’t provided and it was a little loud at night, our hostel was really nice. We remedied the towel situation by buying a microfiber super absorbent towel about the size of a washcloth for one euro from a convenience store, but I couldn’t do anything about the noise at night. This particular hostel was nice though. The location was central to Madrid; they had a kitchen, computers, wifi, an open courtyard, a locker, and sangria and paella at night all for free. I was in an eight person female dorm, and it was comfortable and clean enough. They also had AC, which is more than can be said for many buildings here! All in all, I would consider staying in a hostel again, and may as soon as my first free weekend in Valencia.

Saturday morning we took a bus to Toledo. It’s only about an hour from Madrid, and they sell roundtrip tickets for only nine dollars. One thing I was dying to see in the region of La Mancha were the old enormous windmills described in Don Quixote. Since we didn’t have time to make a separate trip to see them, I hoped to at least catch a glimpse of the giants from out my bus window. I fell asleep both to and from Toledo, so I never even got the chance to look.

Toledo's a really beautiful city. It's in a pretty hilly area, so much so that we had to take escalators up like four or five flights to get from where the bus dropped us off to inside the actual city. Once inside, we were in for an unexpected treat! The festival of Corpus Christi, which is a religious festival celebrating the belief in the body and blood of Christ. This year it fell on Thursday, June 4, with the celebrations on Sunday. We were in Toledo on Saturday, and the entire city was decorated for the event. There were flags of all different types and colors hanging off the sides of buildings. Long white sheets covered the narrow sheets, blocking us from the hot sun. Garland and flowers and umbrellas with long strings attached (they looked like jelly fish) hung above the streets. We passed multiple street performers. All in all there was a lively atmosphere and it was fun to have happened upon it all just by chance.

Our main destination in Toledo was the Cathedral of Toledo, one of the most famous and incredible Gothic Cathedrals in Spain. We took an audio tour of the Cathedral, which was cool because we had just learned about Gothic art in class, so the tour gave us a chance to both apply our knowledge and study for today's art test at the same time! There's so much I could write about the Cathedral of Toledo, but I'll just stick to my favorite parts. For starters, the whole cathedral is incredibly grand! No matter where you looked you could find colorful stained glass windows depicting religious events, paintings and sculptures of Christ, angels, the apostles, and other holy figures, and large pointed arches with vaulted ceilings in the shapes of crosses. That was all in the main area of the church, but if you went off into the side rooms, there were many more fun things to discover, the best of which was a very famous paining by a very famous artist.

El Greco's "The Disrobing of Christ" is housed in the Cathedral of Toledo, along with a few of his other paintings. Though he was born in Crete, El Greco lived in Toledo for a large part of his life, and is considered one of the most famous and influential artists of the Spanish Renaissance. We've talked a lot about him in my art class, so I really enjoyed the chance to see one of his most famous paintings. After we left the cathedral of Toledo, we went to an art museum where they had a few more originals of El Greco.

We spent a lot of time in Toledo just walking around seeing the city. Part of that consisted of popping in and out of different shops, most notably, the sword shops. Toledo steel is world famous for being uncommonly hard and strong. Because of this, the famous Spanish swords were often from Toledo. The city has many stores, both for the casual tourist and the sward enthusiast, which sell swards, daggers, coats of arms, and other weapons, kitchen ware, and general medieval trinkets all constructed from Toledo steel. I enjoyed these shops most of all because it was a genuine part of the city's history and culture. I also considered buying daggers as souvenirs for Tate and Bret, but I decided mom and dad might not appreciate that gift quite so much, and I ultimately decided against it.

We left Toledo around 9:30 Saturday night, exhausted, but ready to see a little more of Madrid. Toledo was definitely worth visiting. It has some of the richest and most traditional Spanish history and traditions, and I would have seriously regretted coming to Spain for ten weeks and never visiting this unique city.

The last bus from Segovia to Salamanca left at six pm, and since we didn’t get to the city until around noon, we only had about five hours to see everything. Segovia is small, though, and most of the major attractions were close together, so we were able to check off everything on our list. Our must do/ must see list for Segovia was as follows: the roman aqueducts, the palace, the cathedral, and a meal of cochinillo. We started at the aqueducts because that’s where the bus left us. They were incredible—so tall—and it was amazing to think about the fact that they were built thousands of years ago and are still standing. I felt like I had jumped into my history book from World Civ freshman year! I find it so interesting that a structure built for utilitarian purposes is considered today a great work of art. It makes me wonder what of our modern appliances may one day, thousands of years in the future, be considered art. This was one of the highlights of the weekend for me, but we were on a tight schedule, so after about half an hour at the aqueducts we booked it all the way to the other end of Segovia to see the palace.

I read somewhere that this palace served as influence for Walt Disney when he designed sleeping beauty’s castle in Disney Land. I don’t know if this is true, but there was definitely a resemblance and also, it was fun to believe that might be true. The front of the Alcazar had a tall rectangular tower with shorter pointed towers all around on both sides. The little pointed towers looked like they were taken straight out of a fairy tale book, which I loved! Inside the palace, there was a small, relatively plain courtyard, and plenty of rooms filled with suits of armor, tapestries on the walls, and stained glass windows, and elaborate, gold ceilings. To get to the tower, we had to climb a long, narrow, and steep set of spiral stairs, but once at the top the view was unbelievable. There was a spectacular view of the cathedral, as well as views of the city, the mountains, the rivers, and the open land.

On the walk back from the Alcazar, you walk straight through the plaza mayor and past the cathedral. We made a quick stop in the plaza for ice cream and to see the plaza before heading to the cathedral. Having now seen the Plaza Mayors of Salamanca, Madrid, Segovia, and Toledo, I can say that none of the latter came even close to Salamanca’s Plaza Mayor. All the others were beautiful, but after the grandeur of Salamanca’s, they all seemed almost mediocre. We ate our ice cream, and then we headed into the cathedral. Like the Cathedral of Toledo, the Cathedral of Segovia was in the gothic style. Because of this, many of the elements were very similar to Toledo’s, but not quite as spectacular. For as beautiful as it was I started to feel the ABC’s of Europe… Another Bloody Cathedral. We left the cathedral with an hour and a half before we had to head to the bus station—just enough time for lunch. As I said before, a meal of cochinillo was on the list of musts for Segovia. Cochinillo is a traditional Segovian dish of roast suckling pig cooked in a wood oven. They cook the whole pig, head and all, and they cut it after they bring it out. This was as much a part of the Segovia experience as the aqueducts and palace. The meal itself was expensive. It cost 21 euros just for an individual plate of the pig. However, they also had a special preset menu, which was a typical Segovian menu, for 25 euros. This consisted of water, red wine, a typical Segovian soup, the Cochinillo, and a typical Segovian dessert. The soup came out first, and though it tasted good, I didn’t eat too much of it. It had a broth that I liked as well as little pieces of pork, but there was also a soft thing that felt like soggy bread, but I highly doubt was actually soggy bread. The more I ate, and the longer I tried to figure out what was in the soup, the less I ate, and the less I wanted to know the answer. It was fine that I didn’t eat much of the soup though, because it left more room for the rest of the meal, which turned out to be one of the best meals I have ever had. The pig came out, and since it was only for two of us, they only brought out a leg (not the whole pig, thank goodness!). The meat was incredibly moist and fell right off the bone. It had the most buttery feel and taste (though there was no butter in it…). If the meat was like butter, the skin was the thinnest, crispiest bacon I’ve ever tasted. Together, it was the best meat dish I’ve ever had. Desert came almost immediately after we finished the pork. It was custard that tasted like rice pudding sans the rice. With the custard, there was a small cinnamon sugar covered pastry that tasted amazing when eaten with the custard. Altogether, it was a wonderful way to end the trip to Segovia, and to end the weekend.

Back in Salamanca I crashed around 10:30, exhausted from the weekend, and in major need of rest to fuel me for the upcoming week. It’s a short week this time—only three days as we leave for Andalucía on Thursday morning. However, its a busy week because I have an art test on Wednesday and a presentation to give when we go to Cordoba.