Friday night I said I would join two other couples that were going to Toledo on Saturday. I metro’d to the train station 20 minutes before the train departed without a ticket or any real preparation for what to do after that. In these moments I find myself repeating to myself “I am a college educated adult, I'm a college...” it’s a mantra that I stole from past co-worker and friend Sara McKenney Gillissie back in 2000-ish. It has given me the confidence to charge through many a task such as…changing the cash register tape, fixing a toilet and putting together furniture from Ikea.
After exiting the metro I didn’t even know where the trains were. I found them quickly but the line was a beast and I was not making it to the front in 20 minutes. My expert traveling friend Chris would be shaking his head in disappointed right now while wearing a quick-dry outfit and sporting the appropriately-calibrated SPF from having researched the angle of the sun and the day's temperature the night before.
My couple-friends went on and I bought a ticket for a train leaving the next half hour. I was prepared that this might be a flying solo in Toledo kind of day as I did not want them to wait for me. I know the couples Erick and Mandy (from New York) and Steve and Michelle (from Los Angeles) from Spanish class. Their team names are Team Bauman (Erick and Mandy) and Team Porter-Rakiec, I’ve told the Porters we’ll come up with a better team name for them, hopefully some combination of their last names. A good portion of my friends are married couples and I like to call them by a team name, for Verity and Lorne - Team Rubio (Spanish for “blonde,” you’ll see why in the picture below).
When the train arrived in Toledo I didn't know where I was going but I followed the crowd and started hiking up the hill while trying to translate the suggested route in my guide book and snap photos of what I believed to be important Toledo landmarks.
Oh my gosh the hike. I don't know how many miles it is but my feet (and I hope my butt!) will be sore tomorrow. I was moving up the hill and I had messaged Mandy that I had arrived. She messaged me back that they could meet me at Plaza de Zocodover, I told them not to wait for me only to look up and see I was standing in the plaza! We met at the Cathedral and the day in Toledo really got started.
Once again, my guide book came in handy! This group was in need of a guide and I was their girl!
We saw the exteriors of the cathedral, archbishop’s quarters, Iglesia San Tome, and took a wonderful tour in Iglesia de San Roman and snapped most of the shots in the trip photo album (under Photos on this blog). I was reading to Steve that the Iglesia de San Roman is “of Visigothic origin...” (thank you guide book) and we bantered over the origin of the Visigoths. I said “well from Vicily Steve,” "Right off the coast of Sicily Erin, its brother to the north?” said Steve. As we were exiting the church, Erick said that Steve Jobs (Apple) got his “i” prefix from the Spanish...the church's sign read: "iGlesia San Ramon," "you know this church has been around a lot longer than Apple." Needless to say this was a fun gang to hang out with. We laughed the whole day.
Erick tried to reason with a security guard to let us into a wedding. We took pictures of a beautifully tiled wall which you’ll see in the album and I said to Michelle and Steve “one day, I want to put beautifully hand painted tiles in my kitchen…maybe hand paint them myself.” Steve said “you could paint them in Spain, like a journal.” “There would be tiles about Kundan” I said, “he’d get his own wall” said Michelle. They know Kundan from Spanish class as well.
We were touring another church and Erick lit a prayer candle and when I put some money into the box for the two of us, he said “didn’t Jesus pay enough.” Serendipitously the lights in the church turned off minutes later, Erick turned and said “they didn’t pay their PG&E bill,” “we need some alternatives to prayer-candle fundraisers” I said.
After San Roman, we were unanimous that it was time to eat. Erick led us to the iphone’s “best ranked restaurant in Toledo where the “menu del dia” was 8,50 euro – a steal! “I’m so hungry my stomach is making love to my back,” said Erick. The host led us to a table and then said he’d take us to a “non-smoking” section of the restaurant. He didn’t have a problem inappropriate touching me on the way there but we got out own private (we think) air conditioned room. I told Steve that he takes the next one for the team, he agreed to do it.
We giggled over the English translated menu:
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We enjoy lunch and set off to wrap up the rest of Toledo. I looked up a shop where we could watch a sword maker making swords and we hustled to find his location in time before heading to our 3:30 pm train home. It was closed. We were out of time anyway, in fact we were more than out of time, we started running.
As we were running through the streets of Toledo Erick’s phone was not finding our exact location and we were not making progress getting directions from locals. Up hills then down hills, then up again and we were hustling…
(While running) “I don’t run!” yelled Mandy, “that’s why I married you!” yelled Erick.
We could not make sense of the direction we were going nor of the location of the train station, “We just need to penetrate the outer wall!” said Erick. From the pictures you will see Toledo is like a fortress, surrounded by large walls.
It was almost 3:20, we found taxis, swooped in and blazed down the hill. I had still been reading out of the guide book as we ran and when we were in the taxi, about the landmarks we were passing.
What makes for a great Saturday? When you’ve laughed so hard you have to remind yourself to breathe.
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I love this story. The running part reminds me of our adventure crossing the street to Wal Mart for wine in Mexico :)
ReplyDelete-Roni