We said goodbye to Cordoba and headed to Toledo, with a few more detours on the way to take a look at some things. Our first detour was to Calatrava La Nueva – the ruins of a fortified castle built in 1217 by the Knights of Calatrava, Spain's first military-religious order. We spotted it from a way away, it was a big hill, with a big bit of ruins on top! We had originally planned on just looking at it as we drove past, but it looked so good, we decided we should brave the road and head up. Peugeot are not really meant for medieval road driving, no seriously, they rattle way too much. It took us about 10 minutes or so to get to the top and we discovered they closed the gates half an hour later for siesta. It was blazing hot sun again, and ruins don’t have any roofs, so it was a hot detour to say the least. They certainly chose a good spot for a fort – you could see for miles around, the views were incredible.
A few quick photos later and we were on our way again. We saw a very cool lake and decided to pull over and have a look, but that upset our satnav who was 100% convinced we were sitting in the middle of the lake. Touchy thing it is. Did I mention we have a female Aussie voice on it, who pronounces the street names in a very Australian manner? Imagine this… turn right on Avenida de Calle Tarragona… (aven-ueoooo deee Calleeey Tarragunna).
We came across some very big roadworks – we knew they were bigger than the other ones we had seen because instead of just some flags and/or flashing lights, there was a manikin, fully dressed in emergency clothing (bright yellow contamination suit, bright red helmet) with a motorized moving arm that waved a big flag up and down. About 1km later, there was a lady (a real lady, not a manikin) stopping traffic to let the ‘other’ lane go instead. No word of a lie, we waited there for at least 10 minutes, often with no cars coming in the other direction. We were finally let through, and drove forever to pass it all, and the huge line of cars waiting to get through on the other end. All in all, it was around 10km worth of road works, and they were actually working on a small 500m stretch in the middle of it all. We have noticed that most construction and road works in Spain have just stopped altogether, I guess that is because of the economic situation. Either that or they do all the work at 2am.
We eventually arrived in Toledo – now I am not quite sure how to describe Toledo! We were on this busy road, and went through a busy roundabout, drove about 200m and there were these enormous stone towers that were the old gates to the city. As soon as we passed them, it was like we were in another town. The buildings were all pretty much the same colour and very, very old. Everything was crammed together on this mound of a hill, and a steep hill at that. Do not go to Toledo and stay at a hotel around the (small) outskirts if you are not prepared to walk uphill. And I mean STRAIGHT up hill with a very steep incline. (Yes, we were lazy, and hot, and so we caught a taxi to the apex of the hill and wandered a little from there).
We had a nice little hotel, and the concierge was a young guy who had just returned from 2 years of teaching Spanish in Melbourne, so I think he was a little chuffed to be having some Aussies checking in. He recommended a restaurant for dinner, and so we headed in there as we were just starving. This must have been the best restaurant in Toledo, we had a delicious meal and really great local wine. It was one of those ‘it’s the mix of flavours that makes this dish so great” kind of restaurants. After the best chicken Cesar salad either one of us have ever had, we shared a plate of grilled sirloin which was just so good – maybe even better as red meat has been so unavailable for a while now. So entrees, main meals, desserts, wine – all just fabulous and made Toledo even more memorable for us.
We didn’t actually do much more in Toledo! It was one of those places that you look at, and it actually looks better from afar, which we learnt the next day.
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