Feeling as we had seen the same things over and over in Madrid we wanted to get out of the city, with not enough time to visit the cities recommended to us, we chose Toledo as it was only a 30 minute train ride from Madrid. A couple days prior when we visited the train station we investigated the timetable and kiosk for purchasing the ticket so that when we came back it would be easy. To our surprise when we returned the kiosk only took credit cards with the touch feature. We quickly ran into the closest ticket office to stand in line to find out that those were only for certain cities. The main ticket office was back in the old station. We hurried to find it, thankfully not having to wait in a line to purchase our tickets.

With about 10 minutes to spare we made our way to our train. Our first Spanish train experience was much different from our Italian experiences. Due to the bombing that happened at this station, they have security – everyone had to go put their bags and coats through the x ray scanner and our tickets were scanned twice prior to boarding the train.

We arrived in Toledo around ten til ten and made the walk to the middle of town. Toledo was Spain’s original capital before it was moved to Madrid in 1561. The middle of town sits atop a hill, and thankfully in these modern times they have five escalators that help you get from the bottom to the top. I was very surprised upon arriving how many people were there. We even saw several people that we had met in Madrid the days before in Toledo. It was quite the tourist attraction.

We grabbed a quick bite to eat in the main square before meeting up with our tour guide Sam. We toured the city of Toledo winding through the tight streets taking in its history and beauty. After our tour ended we wanted to hit the highlights that Sam pointed out to us, so we made our way to one of Toledo’s synagogues, their cathedral and finally the war museum. While we didn’t visit the actual museum, we visited the cafeteria atop the bibliotheca where we were able to take in the view of the city from its highest point. Enjoying a cerveza and tortilla de patatas, we took in the breathtaking views.

We booked our tickets back to Madrid at 4:20 pm, so we made the “climb” back down the hill, of course via escalators. Once we arrived back Madrid we stopped by the botanical gardens, this being another one of my must dos. To our surprise there was an exhibition in the building at the back. We ventured through the gardens enjoying the beautiful flowers, especially the tulips that were in bloom. The art exhibit was fantastic and unique, we stopped to enjoy a glass of vino outside the exhibit before setting back off through the gardens again to make our way to dinner.

Nick had booked us reservations at Botin, the worlds oldest, longest continuous running restaurant, where their speciality was suckling pig. Arriving before our 8 pm reservations we made our way to a packed bar around the corner where we each had two of their super small cervezas.

Finally at 8 pm we made our way back to Botin to be quickly sat at a table upstairs. By the time we arrived, the place was already pretty full. We ordered cheese as an appetizer, which literally came as sliced cheese on a plate. There are no frills to their cheese plates over here. Nick ordered the sucking pig and I had the filet Botin, which was served with mushrooms in sauce. Nick really enjoyed his, mine was good but I should have followed my instinct and ordered it medium well. Nick said medium

and unfortunately it came out more rare. However for €23 it was the largest filet I’ve ever seen in my life.

On our walk back to the apt we saw several people on the street with churros, so we stopped into a shop nearby and grabbed some ourselves. While these churros were better than San Gines, the chocolate wasn’t as good. Regardless they were chocolate and churros that we were enjoying walking the streets of Madrid. After another successful day we made our way back to our AirBnB.