Spain Day 4

On Friday night we discovered this metal curtain for our bedroom window that sort of looks like a mini garage door. We thought this was great as the street noise below was quite loud and it would be nice to keep out the light as the curtains were quite light. During the night, I woke up to banging doors, rattling of keys and loud voices. It went on for quite some time and I was getting really annoyed. It woke Reuben up too. Reuben was just about to get up and tell everyone to keep it down (there was a sign in the hallway to keep it quiet after 11:30pm) when he decided to just check his watch to see what time it was. Turned out it was 10:30am...our nice, metal curtain had not let any light in and we had slept like rocks (still recovering from jet lag, I think). So funny! But it was really hard to get out of bed since we still had this feeling that it was the middle of the night.

Saturday we had planned to go to Toledo. This little town is about an hour bus ride to the southwest of Madrid. So we quickly got ready and rushed to the bus station that Esther had told us about. After waiting in line, we found out that the bus to Toledo left from a different bus station but that we could buy our tickets for San Sebastian there. So, then we took the Metro to the other bus station, found the ticket window and lined up for the bus. Thankfully a bus left every half hour so we were in luck. We got on the bus at 12:30pm.

After arriving in Toledo, we had to walk to the old city up a very steep incline. And then we went through the Puerta in the ramparts and into the old city. It had lots of teeny tiny streets, amazing churches, cool views and lots of souvenir shops! We stopped in at the Cathedral, which was the biggest one I've ever been in. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside but Reuben insisted on taking a few discreetly while I wasn't looking.

Then we found this church that housed a very well-known El Greco painting of the Burial of Count Orgaz.

Just recently, they figured out he was actually buried right below where the painting was mounted in the church. After this, we walked to a Jewish temple but didn't feel like paying to go inside. And then, this other church that had hung the chains of Christian prisoners who had been freed as a monument to them.
Basically, we just kept walking around, stopping to take tons of pictures and looking at the views and everything.
And playing on random swingsets in deserted courtyards.

We took the bus home at 6pm because we wanted to see the sunset over the town. It was quite cool. And then when we got back to Madrid, Reuben wanted to see the Palace so we decided to walk back to our hotel. Except that the map didn't tell us it was uphill the whole way!!!!

We didn't ever go inside the Palace even though it's supposed to be spectacular. When we got closer to our hotel, we stopped in at a corner store and bought Cava (champagne, we didn't have a corkscrew so we couldn't by wine), a bag of chips and a chocolate bar as a late night snack. We also bought some muffins and pastries so that could eat breakfast in our room before we met up with Tim and Esther for church.