Toledo (oh LAY!)

Toledo was absolutely STUNNING. 
It´s a small city, 1km both ways, but you still do get an incredible amount of exercise walking around... the whole city is hills. And not like, a couple that you can see and make sense of, the streets go up and down it seems at their own will, making it confusing (good thing it was small and we´d always end back up at the hostel in a couple hours anyways).  We got in everything we needed to do in one day, and it would be nice to stay and soak up the beauty, but we were just as happy to move on after experiencing it.

The streets were so fun to walk down the cobble stone, with smells of deep fried food wafting from the homes´ windows.  We´d have to plaster ourselves to a wall when a car came by (there was barely room for smart cars, and really impressive when the teeny tiny garbage trucks went by!)

Toledo was filled with little trinket shops, mostly selling swords (which is EXACTLY what I thought would be a perfect souvenier to carry around for the rest of the trip....) and knives, or gold jewelry. Baye got herself a cool ceramic jug labeled Sangria, and I bought myself a necklace with a round pendant hand carved with a pattern of a bird and flowers. I´ve been wearing it ever since and already gotten a few compliments here in Barcelona :)

I went through the Toledo Church, it was really impressive. Spent a few hours inside with a free English audio guide. Apparently the whole population of Toledo can live in there. I believe it, it´s massive. Weren´t allowed flash photo, so most of my shots are blurry.  There were hanging red hats, a really cool massive gold...uh...thing. I don´t even know if it has a purpose, but it looks like a sculpture of a tower.  I´ve already forgotten what it´s called ;(

Baye and I took a walk along the water that they have. It was really weird to be walking along water and still feel like you´re in an absolute dessert (cactuses and grasses all yellow and crispy).  The water didn´t smell pleasant but you got used to it and it was really nice to look at anyways.  We also tried to walk to the bull ring, which is decently far uptown, knowing that there wasnt´going to be a bull fight on... not sure if you´re normally allowed in, but it was closed when we got there so we only saw the outside of the building unfortunately!

We sat on the patio of a cheap tapas restaurant for a few hours, and enjoyed a delicious breakfast the next morning at the restaurant attached to our hostel.  The hostel had an INCREDIBLE terrace up top, overlooking the city, tempting you to roof hop. It was a brand new hostel, only 2 weeks in business, so the terrace had just been finished when we got there. Photos will come, but unfortunately at my hostel here (in Barcelona) there´s no ability to plug in your USB so I can´t upload photos yet.