Dia Dos in Toledo (10.14.07)

I love travelling outside a tour! Today Mom and Dad and I kicked around Toledo for our second day, and unlike the OAT Moroccan Odyssey that was choc full of learning and discovery, our tour through Toledo seems to be very light on the learning and discovery and heavy on eating and sleeping.

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For a second day in a row we didn´t get moving until after noon, although I did manage to strap on my running shoes around 10:15 and head south to run among the Roman ruins along the bank of the Tagus River.

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Our biggest decisions each day seem to revolve around where to eat, and breakfast/lunch was at the same cafe in the Zocodover Plaza that we ate at yesterday. During my midnight amble through the streets last night, I stumbled upon a vegetarian restaurant, so I know where we are going for dinner tonight whether Dad likes it or not.

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When we couldn´t get a seat on the open air trolley car that totes tourists around Toledo, we decided to follow one of the walking tours in our second guidebook. This tour took us up past the Puerta del Sol, on of the most distinctive gates to the city, back to the Plaza Zocodover which we learned was at one point the entrance to the medina and is still the nerve center of the old city. We headed east past a statue of Cervantes and his Don Quixote and ended up walking along the city wall acros from the Puenta de Alcantara and looking across the river at the Visigoth castle of San Servando. This reminds me that I need to figure out who the Visigoth´s were. I was impressed with Dad who managed most of the walk without too much griping, though as soon as we got within a ten minute walk of the hotel he decided that he had had enough and disappeared.

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This left Mom and I alone to try and knock out walking tour Number 2 in our guidebook, but the map in the book was so poorly marked that I had us doing circles in the maze of streets and eventually Mom had to sit down to take a power nap before she could go any further. It wasn´t until we decided to follow a big group of Japanese tourists that we finally found the Sephardic Museum. I was very interested in learning more about the significant history and culture of the Jews in Toledo until their expulsion in 1492. Alas, all the signage was in Spanish,k so what little information I gleaned was from the 1.5 pages devoted to Jewish history in our guidebook.

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We did indeed eat at ¨Madre Tierra¨vegetarian restaurant that I had discovered last night. Despite his irritable demeanor prior to eating and clear disappointment that Mom and would be so insensitive as to dictate a vegetarian restaurant to tim, when we got there the food and ambience ended up being fantastic. I will post pictures of dad with a vegetarian menu in his hands later.

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Next stop...Madrid!