Madrid to Toledo
We didn’t plan any activities for our last day in Madrid. That proved to be a good thing. We packed, enjoyed a leisurely breakfast at the hotel, and caught up on news and email. After all that, we still had plenty of time to walk over to El Corte Inglés and get Steve a new pair of denim jeans. (Earlier in the week, Steve’s jeans had finally worn out, leaving him with only one pair of pants.) Bonus - I also had time to browse one of my favorite stores, Desigual, and treat myself to a new shirt.
At 3:00pm, it was time to leave Madrid for our next stop, the historic town of Toledo. We said goodbye to the lovely Circulo Gran Via hotel and took a taxi to the Atocha Station, across the street from the Reina Sofia museum. On the ground level of Atocha is an indoor garden with tropical trees and plants. The foliage looked a little dry and dusty, and we couldn’t walk through the garden because of construction, but it was still a nice touch.
It was our first time taking the train in Spain. The large screens said our train would leave from the ground floor, so went through security checkpoint (where our backpacks and coats were x-rayed) to the boarding area and found some seats. The platform number for our train didn’t appear on the screens until 15-20 minutes before the scheduled departure time. We had assigned seats, so boarding was easy. There was plenty of room for our backpacks overhead, and our seats were comfortable. The high-speed train reached Toledo in just 35 minutes!
It was a short, uneventful trip. When we reached Toledo and got off the train, we were blown away by the train station! Its Moorish-revival style was unlike anything we had seen in Madrid or anywhere else. It was a preview of what would soon see in Toledo.
We jumped into one of the many taxis in front of the station and rode to our hotel, which was once the palace of its namesake, Eugenia de Montijo. She was a Spanish aristocrat who became a French empress upon her marriage to Napoleon III. The lobby had a gorgeous stained glass ceiling, and the beamed ceilings in the reception area and over the bar date back to the 16th century. Our hotel room had a view of the Alcazar, and there was a welcome plate with delicious, locally made mazapán. This beautiful, historic hotel would be our home base for exploring Toledo over the next six days.
