Day 18 Toledo

We got up and took the train to Toledo. We walked the old city, climbed a church tower, and found an excellent Syrian restaurant in a back alley for lunch. Then we walked along the river to an overlook, and visited a small museum with map exhibits from Magellan's expedition, as well as some El Greco original paintings. It was threatening rain all day, and there was an advisory for heavy rain, but we only got misted a few times and even made it back to Madrid and had grocery store supper on a bench before it got wet. Another long day of walking but a good one.









This El Greco was kind of appropriate, as it depicts St James as a Pilgrim.

Thoroughly enjoyed reading your post. What a trip and between your writing and the pictures you had me along.

Thanks, glad it was entertaining!

Agree with UTsig - I appreciate the time and effort you spent on this. It really provides insights into the world less travelled (by me). I enjoy the trip even though I'll probably never do them myself.

I really am glad you guys enjoyed it. I think I said elsewhere that writing it out helps me to think through and process the experience, and I've always enjoyed reading trip reports from others. Most of them I'll never get to do, but it's fun to dream and learn about different places, and you never know when an opportunity might actually present itself to go somewhere you never thought you would.

Great photography.

Wow! I am jealous. you know how to vacation!

Thanks for posting, great pictures!

quote:

Originally posted by Ronin101:
Wow! I am jealous. you know how to vacation!

Well, I guess that depends on ones perspective and what they're hoping to get out if a vacation, lol. It was definitely physically exhausting, and I'm still working on healing up that ankle, but emotionally, spiritually, and mentally it was fantastic, and I love that I got to share it with my wife.

I've always wanted to do a long through-hike somewhere, but as a responsible adult with a job and a family that's probably never going to happen this side of retirement, and who knows what kind of physical shape I'll be in by that point. Thanks to some HR changes at work this year I was able to re-purpose some banked time and figured it was now or never. It was a pretty inexpensive trip to Europe, too, all things considered...I think we did the whole thing for about $2k transport and lodging for three weeks. We mostly shopped local grocery stores for food, so that cost wasn't much different than it would have been at home.

It's probably not going to happen for a couple more years because we have some other plans in the works, but I'm already plotting our next Camino. I'd like to do the Camino Ingles from Ferrol to Santiago, and then go on to Finisterre/Muxia again. That should take about 10 days which makes it doable in a standard vacation timeframe, and would include some new stuff as well as a portion that we've already done before but really enjoyed. Bonus points if I can find a flight that drops us in another random city for a day or two on the way there or back so we can experience that, too. But I also want to drive to Alaska, take my kids to Prague, go to Hawaii (been to the other 49 it's the only one left), visit Africa and Australia, take some long motorcycle trips, and hike the Rota Vicentina along the coast of Portugal, so there's a lot competing for my limited time and money!