We left Aranda de Duero happy that the start of our Road Trip had gone so well. If you have read what I wrote about it (a couple of postings back) you'd know that we were lucky to have arrived in that charming town when it was celebrating its patron saint. (Lots of music, dancing, roast lamb, and bodegas, the traditional caves where wine was stored.)
So, after having celebrated my birthday and spent a few days there, off we went down south toward our next stop: Toledo.
Aranda is an old town with the typically narrow streets and the crowded urbanization to be expected of towns like it. But, we found it was surprisingly well organized, so we had no trouble getting around or finding a place to park our car.
Hence we expected Toledo, a much bigger and much visited town to be even better: we were wrong.
Getting there was no problem. Spanish highways are a so very different from the paved cowpaths I first encountered back in the late seventies and early eighties. Today, driving in them is not only safe and fast, it is a pleasure.
Via the A1 and A2 highways, it's about 250 kilometers from Aranda de Duero to Toledo, about two and a half hours at my accustomed speed. We were there by noon.
Right! So, next order of business? Find the Air BandB lodging we had booked for our stay in Toledo.
As we drove into the city, I knew that finding the place we were going to stay would not to be easy. Even from afar, the city looked complicated:
the streets that led us into the center of the city were winding, narrow, and filled with traffic. The street we were on kept going up and up, until we came to something that looked as if it were the center of the city. There was a large building to my left and a series of shops and restaurants to my right. The large building had limited-time parking in front of it and I drove into the only free space available.
"Let's try the GPS again," I said to my wife. The GPS had sort of given up trying to find the address I had entered. It gave an impossible route through streets that seemed not to exist. I decided I would put the car in a nearby parking garage and we decided that after we had eaten I would do what I usually do when stumped to find a street or address: I would ask a taxi to go there and I would follow it with my car.
We went into a hotel restaurant that was a half block away and in front of the large building that we found out was the famous Alcazar: that's the large building that dominates the view up above.
Anyway, the food in the restaurant was awful. It was mostly fast food, and bad fast food at that.
"Toledo is nothing like I remember it," said my wife.
"Nothing is forty years later," I said.
She had fond memories of the place because her parents had brought her to Toledo when she was a teenager.
I finished the "tostada" I had ordered and I can say that I would never order another like it unless it was under duress, threat of severe punishment, or ravishing hunger. It was a piece of dry, tasteless bread, with drier even more tasteless cheese melted on it, and a sprinkling of "chorizo" which is what the menu said was the pink things that were on the cheese.
"OK," I said once I had paid the exorbitant twenty euros for the "tostada" a beer and a soft drink for Claudette, "let's go find the street."
I thought that the best place to ask would be the garage. We had to get the car anyway so that would be killing the proverbial two birds with one stone. Again I was wrong.
I went up to the booth where the parking attendant was and I showed him the paper I had printed with the name of the street and address. I asked (and I will write the conversation in English; if you would like the funnier version in Spanish, go to my other blog http://mecaseconunafrancesa.blogspot.fr ):
"Excuse me, can you tell me how I can get to this street?"
He looked at the paper, scratched his head, rubbed his chin, and took his cap of and put it back on.
"Well, look" he said, "if you want to get to that street, you have to go back to the entrence of the town and then take the road that goes to the back of the town, and then go into this neighborhood, that I don't remember the name just now, but it is well-known and then you have to go in there, like if you were trying to get to the center of the city and..."
"Thank you very much," I said, "I think I can find it now."
I motioned to Claudette to follow me and we left the garage.
"Aren't we taking the car?" she asked.
"In Mexico," I said, "we have an adjetive, "cantinflesco", that is in honor of a famous comedian, Cantinflas, who was famous for talking for fifteen minutes without really saying anything. The directions that fellow gave me were "cantinflescas." We'd better ask someone else.
In the street, I looked for a taxi but after several minutes, none came by. So, I stopped a fellow that was pushing one of those two wheeled things used to carry heavy objects. In Mexico, we call them "diablitos", little devils. Don't ask me why.
"Excuse me," I said, "can you tell me where this street is?" I showed him the paper.
"Ah, yes," he said. "It is not far. In fact, I am going to a street that is not far from it. You can follow me."
"OK," I said turning to Claudette, "we'll go with this fellow and..." Claudette was not there. She was taking pictures across the street.
"Claudette," I yelled, "what are you doing over there? Come on! We have to go with this fellow."
Off we went. The fellow chattering all the time as we walked up narrow streets and down narrow streets. The cobbled pavement was rough. The fellow, a Rumanian, said that he liked Toledo because it resembled the old Roman towns of his country. It reminded me more of other tourist traps in France, like Carcassonne and Cordes sur Ciel, but I said nothing.
After about fifteen minutes of walking, he said, "I have to go this way to pick up something but you go up this street and at the end, you will find the street you are looking for."
It was another then minutes of walking and asking people but we finally found the street.
The building where our reservation said our room would be looked like a school dormitory. The reason for that was that it WAS a school dormitory! Located in the old Jewish barrio, it was lodging for the students that came to the nearby University of Castilla-La Mancha.
On the way there, we had passed the Cathedral, Synagogs, and lots and lots of stores selling trinkets for tourists. But the area was nice. There was a park across the street and Santa Maria la Blanca, an old Roman church, was not more than fifty meters away; also, just around the corner there was a street full of bars, cafés, and restaurants.
Getting to our room took some time. We rang the bell, knocked on the door, yelled and so on. No one answered. Finally, a young man, a student, came out and he let us in but warned that the lady who was in charge of the building was not there. We had to wait for her a half hour.
When we did get our room, although a bit spartan and definitely something for students, the view made all the trouble worth while. Here is what we could see from our large window:
That's Santa Maria la Blanca, and the other light is the street where the Museo del Greco is located.
"There seems to be no place to park the car around here," I said, "so let's leave it in the garage; the daily rent is not expensive."
"What about our luggage?" my wife asked.
"Well, we'll just walk down to the Alcazar, have something to eat in a nice place, and then walk back with our luggage."
Easier said than done: the waking DOWN toward the Alcazar was no problem; walking back UP with the bags trundling along the cobble-stone streets was a real treat.
We decided that we had better buy something to take back to the room with us and eat it there. We saw a modern looking shop that advertised those staples of new-cuisine fast food: wraps, falafel, and Subway type sandwiches. The person in attendance was a MEXICAN! I heard his accent and asked him where he was from. He said he was a native of the northern city of Torreón.
"I went to work as an illegal immigrant in the fields of California," he explained, "and I met a Spanish girl at a dance. We got married and here I am."
He told us a lot of things about the city, among them that most of the shops selling trinkets and souvenirs to tourist are not owned by locals, but rather by foreigners who employ locals to run them and to act as fronts for ownership by non-Spaniards. It now made sense to me why there were so many foreign looking shops in the town. Here is a sample:
That's Claudette coming out of the very Spanish Bijou Brigitte store.
Back in our room, we looked for a place to eat our sandwiches in peace. As I said, the building was like a student dormitory and the "dining room" was also in that style with long tables and stools, microwave ovens and coffee machines, vending machines and a common refrigerator with parcels of food that had name tags on them.
Night was falling as we finished our dinner so we went upstairs to freshen up and then go out to explore the town a bit more.
The fact is that we were very disappointed with the city. Yes, it has its bevy of old churches, a wonderful cathedral, its historic monuments, and so on, but wherever you go you are hindered by groups of tourist (lots of Chinese and Japanese) following a guide and crowding around whatever is to be seen to take photos and listen to the guides drone on about the "must see" sight.
But, that was not the worst of it. What I found deplorable was the hundreds of shops selling junk, the dozens of chain restaurants, the many, many bars and cafés that produce tons of trash (lots of dirty paper napkins and cigarette buts for the most part) that is strewn about the streets.
It was quite a change from Aranda de Duero where we didn't feel like tourists because the streets were filled with the locals celebrating their patron saint in their very peculiar way. There we were just part of the celebrating crowd. In Toledo, we felt like part of the herd, the tourist mob.
After wandering around for a while, we trudged up the winding streets to our room. The only bit of real local color we saw were the families enjoying the night air in the park across the street.
We had a well-deserved rest and then next day we made another game try at discovering the city; but, it was all the same wherever we went: shops selling souvenir junk and groups of tourists jamming the streets. In despair and glad we had only booked two days in Toledo, we went back to our room; we were resting from the mornings excursion and from walking up and down those streets, when there was a knock on the door: it was the owner of the building, the man who had rented us the room.
He is a nice and friendly fellow who confirmed that most of the tenants of the building were indeed students who were in Toledo for language studies at the University. He told us about his plans to convert the building into a "real hotel". We let him know, gently, that we were disappointed with the city and he told us that what we should see before we left the next day were the "cobertizos y callejones." (See this link for a good look at what these are and how they are being restored:
http://www.toledo-turismo.com/es/cobertizos-y-callejones_106 )
He told us that these dark, very old alleys were being restored as a tourist attraction. He said that they are especially interesting at night when their sombre mood is more romantic. They are covered because the overlapping roofs of the adjoining houses create a complete roof. Some have a canal on either side for the axels of carriages to pass through. The houses were mostly inhabited by jewish families in the old days.
We decided to have a go at them that night. Off we went half understanding the directions that the owner of the building had given us. Therefore, we promptly got lost.
Fortunately, we wound up in front of a police station. They say that God protects the innocent and the dumb, and He did so this time because when we asked for directions, a policeman that was just coming off duty told us he lived in that barrio and that he would show us the way.
The young policeman was a wonderful guide. He told us stories about the places and streets we were passing and explained how we could get back to the center of town if we got lost.
"Just look for stairs that go down, and go down every stair you see. Eventually," he said, "you will wind up in the center of town."
Here is a picture of the "callejón" where we started out trek.
We wandered around in the maze of callejones for an hour until we came to an open space where there was a sort of plaza. There was a bar-restaurant there and people were sitting outside in the tables that filled the plaza. It was a cheery spot with bright lights and live music playing.
"Ah, so this where the locals hang out, hiding from the madding crowds of tourist," I said.
It was a beautiful place, with trees and grand, old houses surrounding the plaza, creating the mood of a protected space.
We decided we had had enough for the night and we wanted to go back home. The problem was, we had no idea how to go back. We took the policeman's advice and we started to look for stairways.
After wandering around some more and going down every stairway we found, we did end up in the center of town. But, now we had to walk UP to our room. Oh, the misery. We were dead tired when we retired for the night well past midnight.
The next morning we decided to have breakfast in one of the cafes around the corner and then go to the El Greco museum. The breakfast was grand with large croissants and good coffee. Then we went to the "museum." It turned out to be another disappointment: for EIGHT euros one can stand in front of a wall where there is a reproduction of "The Burial of the Count of Orgaz." A "guide" drones on about the characters and the meaning of the painting to the assembled tourists. That is ALL there is in the so-called museum.
We gave up on Toledo and walked DOWN the streets to our car, with our luggage in tow. We paid the garage and sighed in relief as we were left the town. Next stop: Córdoba.
