toogreytogrind

First of all sorry for the amount of time I've not been keeping this up-to-date, but that's another story. Now onto this:

I had a good weekend, why, well Lisa was over for the weekend and we had a little trip planed. I met her at the airport and she commented on how hot it was! It wasn’t we were in an air-conditioned airport and I’d been outside and knew how hot it was, it had been getting hotter all week. We went straight to the metro and down to Mendez Alvaro to catch the bus down to Toledo. So it was only when we got down to Toledo when the heat hit us.



Arriving at Toledo there was a thermometer outside the bus station 37 C. We decided to get a taxi to the hotel. When I asked the taxi driver he basically said we didn’t need one as it was just around the corner, so we set off to try and find it. The first group we asked where it was had no idea, but the second person was very determined to get us to the hotel and walked with us to a bar and was asking all the people in the bar where it was. Very nice I don’t think you would get this in Madrid. We finally got to the Hotel and I got to practice some more Spanish with the Hotel staff. I think she remembered me from when I booked the Hotel, which I managed to do over the phone and all in Spanish. It was so nice to be in the room and to crank up the air-con and just chill. Lisa hadn’t eaten since 4 in the morning due to having to evacuate the airport because of the fire alarm and she had to leave her full English (vegy) breakfast. So hunger had the final say and we had to go in search of some Jamon free food.



I’m so glad a booked a hotel outside of the town as the walk to the town is very impressive with the main gate of the city walls and the town on the hill in the background. The town itself is a labyrinth of medi-evil built streets – built during the Arab occupation. Be warned it is very easy to get lost!

We found a café which looked ok so we decided to eat there. In both our Spanish classes we learnt the Spanish word for hake (merluza) and we both thought why hake? I think every menu over here has that fish, and cheap as well. 4€ for hake chips and salad is quite reasonable.

Venturing back out, we found the main town centre and the thermometer outside the farmacia read 42C and the wind felt like it was coming from a hairdryer on hot. But, as always Mahou (cerveza) came to the rescue again and we had a chill outside the bar in the square.



Toledo has lots of history and part of its history is it’s industry, which was mainly swords making. As you can imagine that industry went into decline can’t think why! Although you can still buy an official Conan the barbarian, Gladiator etc sword (espada) for your living room wall! The espadarias have moved with the times and now produce pen knives of all varieties, of varying quality as well, some very run of the mill but good quality for a reasonable price and others simply gorgeous but still at a reasonable price for the quality. If you like a particular design ask to see other examples of the same knife they are hand made so they are all different, find the grain of wood or horn you like the best.
All in all a great weekend. This is what I should be doing, and I've been looking around for other places to visit for day trips and maybe weekends away. We've also got some sort of travel plans hatched for the next few months. August there are no classes so I have lots of free time. So I'm going south. However it is apparently the worse time as it's hotter in the south, so more 40c plus heat.

Also the plan after teaching in October is to leave Madrid and make my way to Barcelona. There's a few interesting places on the way so maybe do a week of that and then meet up with Lisa in Barcelona and do the tour of the costa brava. Who knows - el tiempo lo dira! Hopefully some more news to follow.