A Day of Mishaps....

We thought we'd catch the 12:30 train to Toledo only to find out that this isn't the Europe of the 70's that I remember. No hopping on a train and just go. Now you need a reservation, go through security, yada yada. Needless to say the line was miles long and so we missed the train and caught a later one, putting us in Toledo kinda on the late side.

Then we jumped on the hop on hop off bus, which turned out to be only hop off and never ride it again. But the views and town of Toledo are beautiful. A medieval walled world heritage site, once the capital of Spain and where El Greco, the artist, is from.

We wondered the winding cobblestone streets of the village. Shopping, coffees, etc. Wen to the cathedral, amazing.

In the afternoon it rained, poured - fortunately we had our handy rolled up rain jackets with us. We headed over to a hacienda de Cardinales outside of the gated walls on a recommendation that Rosemary had, only to find out they weren't serving dinner til 8:30pm and our train was leaving back at 930pm. Instead we drank at their bar in a beautiful corner table area fit for a Queen (see photos).

We got to the train station too early, so we went across the street for some more vino - the bar was frequented by adorable old toothless spainish men.

Once back in Madrid, took the tube back towards our hotel, it was about 10:30pm (stays light out til about 9:30) and we hadn't eaten, so went back to our favorite Tapas Bar across from the hotel, Mercado de la Reina. Our server Andrea recognized us and made us even better tapas than before.

Some of the tapas were wild mushrooms with carmelized onions and goat cheese; cured ham with asparagus on brie; mussels fried in cheeses; foie gras with apricot jam on bread. All of it great. The bill was around $50 for the 3 of us including about 8 glasses of wine, Sangria and a dessert that Andrea made special for us.

The last photo of Rosemary snoring away (which was actually on the train) sums up about how we all felt after the long, busy day. Adios.