MADRID AND TOLEDO
We left for Madrid on Sunday 23 till Friday 28 of November empty flight and not expensive, arrived in Madrid at 10 am and found are way to the down town bus, and got on a 5 euro bus ride instead of a 40 euro taxi, how proud we where!!
The bus dropped us at the bottom of Gran Via and we walked 20 minutes to the hotel,
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One of the ceilings in the palace , they were all painted similarly[/caption]
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From the Spanish armoury[/caption]
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More inside the cathedral[/caption]
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A bigger overview of inside the cathedral[/caption]
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The alter at the Madrid cathedral, it was so rich[/caption]
The hotel was another gem!! Called HOTEL PRECIADOS MADRID, once again it was mentioned in the Rick Steve’s book, location could not have been better. And. The hotel room and staff were excellent, this was our anniversary week (Trish had told them) every night we got back to the room there was a surprise !! Champs one night red wine the next , fruit the next , all the little things that make a hotel stay special, did I mention the room was superb also , they actually gave Trish two rooms to choose from before we moved in.
Madrid its selve is another walking city , you can walk for miles comfortably and see all the attractions to be seen , and we did , the first day we just walked randomly to orientate ourselves , there a walking streets all over the place (no traffic) tapas bars on every corner and so clean. Another ma
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This was from the armoury, what was strange was nothing was over five feet tall![/caption]
jor feature we found was a shopping conglomerate called CORTES ENGLESE, this place is the equiverlent of THE BAY , but a lot bigger and there must have been six of them around the location where we were staying.and strangely all full of shoppers , the one closest to up had nine floors and on the ninth floor it had what could only be described as a food court for the rich !! And if you where lucky enough to get by the window the view of all the
buildings lit up at night was superb, we frequented this a couple of times .
Another fascinating site going on was the Xmas trees and lights lighting up all over the city,
There does not seem to be any expense spared for a country that is supposed to be in so much monetary trouble.
The following day we did the palace and museums , the biggest attraction being the PALACIOS REAL MADRID, we did this with an audio guide , it took us three hours , a great piece of historical building , arts, jewellery , and armoury , they even had a room called the STRADIVARIUS ROOM ,these instrumement are all still used today today at specific royal and government functions.
The other main museum we enjoyed was the NAVAL MUSEUM,which once again we did with an audio guide, the biggest problem with this was all the writing on the different artifacts was all in Spanish so you couldn’t get into the nitty gritty of what thing really where, still very worth the visit.
The next day we booked a bus tour to the city of TOLEDO, this historically is a place where Jews Muslims and Christians all lived peacefully, they tolerated each other’s skills( I think it was the 1300’s ) while all around them where religious wise trying to kill each other , quite like today !!
Toledo is now a national monument , surrounded three sides by a river and walled it sits on top of a hill, quite an enlightening site as you approach it , the bus obviously parks outside the walls and it’s walking from there , a clever thing they did do was build a escalator structure from the bottom of the hill to the top for those people who cannot climb so well,a great idea!!
Our tour guide stayed with us till the afternoon , she was very good showing us mainly around the Jewish quarters, in the afternoon we took a trolley train 45 minute ride around the whole of the outside of the city the best five euro I ever spent.
The remainder of our stay we visited the Cathedral, also noted as the biggest cathedral in Spain,( i thought we had been in the biggest cathedral in Spain a few times already on this trip) !! Once again it was quite spectacular, it was built in the 1200’s and then added on basically each century by the different religions that took over the. City, to make it into the monstrosity it is today, it still has a mass ceremony approximately seven time a day .
A great day out ,and a day was enough, the drive back to Madrid took an hour. I will post pictures of Toledo on the next blog , this might be too big .
Our final day in Madrid we just spent chilling out ,apart from that it rained all day also.
All in all a great trip,love Madrid ,loved the hotel, love the Spanish, the five night stay could have been four nights , but then again we are not rushing anywhere.
later
M&T
