Toledo!

Hey everybody!

Here´s a little short entry to tell you about day 2 when we went to Toledo.

We took off early from our hotel in Madrid in a little,but airconditioned, bus to the walled town of Toledo. It´s about 1 1/2 hours from Madrid to the south.

After a long ride we rounded a corner and the quintessential Spanish city, with huge historic Roman gates and narrow alleyways, spread out before us. What a photo opportunity! So we stopped and snapped away in awe of the incredible view. Hopefully I will be able to send pictures of that view soon.

We walked around the city for about an hour and a half. The city sits on a hill, winding itself around a river in an incredible valley. It is definitely the city to have good comfortable shoes for. The narrow, cobblestone streets wind uphill like a maddening but beautiful maze.

There are lots of shops for jewelry and knives(Toledo steel is known all over the world). We headed to the magnificent cathedral. It is in my opinion the most beautiful in Europe. And as you might imagine I am the worst kind of Cathedral/medieval/gothic fanatic.

Behind the main altar(guilded in gold) there is a round "window to the heavens". Light floods down from a beautiful oval skylight, decorated in marble saints and angels. It really transports you.

After we finished at the cathedral and did a little shopping, we headed to a local cooking school, called Escuela de La Cocina y El Vino, where we saw a marzipan demo. The demo was interesting, and we were able to participate. We made homemade marzipan (basically a soft pliable almond paste with sugar) and then molded it into whatever animal shapes we could think of. I made a sea monster but he fell apart after baking(okay so he started out as a moose but I couldn't get the legs to work so he became a seamonster)After the demo we had a wonderful lunch prepared by the school. A famous local Chef, Adolfo(I never did catch his last name) came to the lunch and spoke to us about the Spanish diet and local food products.

Then, because he liked us so much, he invited us up to his bodega in the hills surrounding Toledo. This was not on our original itinerary. I was so glad we went once I saw the place.

He makes his own wine for his restaurant in the family bodega (meaning a cellar where wine is aged). His son, Javier(not Mesa, sorry mom), runs the wine production. They showed us around and Chef Adolfo pulled all sorts of unusual plants and seeds out of his garden for us to taste. The large stalk with a snow ball on top in the picture is actually a type of onion blossom. Chef Adolfo sprinkles the little buds on his salads. There is also a picture of him talking about how to tell the difference between male and female squash blossoms (the female is the only one that produces a zucchini-sorry guys).