This was the final part of our holiday. Last year, Pauline had struggled bravely to visit just the cathedral in Toledo. She was suffering great pain from Spinal Stenosis. Last December she had an operation that successfully took her out of pain. So she looked forward to this visit until she broke her left femur at the end of April. Her walking distance is still very limited. However, she was determined to do as much as she could.
On our first morning we returned to the cathedral and I took a great deal of video footage of the great building. For me, the most amazing experience was to view the famous Transparente where an intricate sculpture is lit by excluding part of the beautiful vaulting at the rear of the altar. Of course we drooled once more over the roofs of the chapter house and its ante room and in the sacristy we loved the great El Greco paintings. The retable behind the altar seemed to continue upwards forever!
From the cathedral we walked slowly up the hill to Adolfo's restaurant where we had a lovely lunch in a stylish atmosphere. My mobile phone rang whilst at lunch - it was a call to arrange delivery of a new sofa the following Friday! Then we walked further up the hill to Zocodover Plaza.
Just before the top of the hill we found ourselves in the middle of a great commotion. Behind me, a young woman had been caught trying to snatch a purse. She had swiftly unzipped a man's waist bag which he was wearing across his shoulder and extracted his wife's purse which was inside. It was an object lesson that told me never to take out all my cash (which I had done) and never to put it in a zipped pocket. A buttoned pocket is much harder to open for a pickpocket.
In the afternoon we visited the El Greco museum and later enjoyed the peace and quiet of its garden. We took a taxi back to the hotel where we had a rest before going out for an evening meal. Our outdoor meal was not without incident. Our taxi driver delivered us to the restaurant and we found a spare table. The young waitress spoke little English but we coped using body language and pointing to the menu. She was quite a character and we marvelled at the way she held aloft her trays of drinks and wove her way between tables. However, she got it wrong later in the evening and dropped the lot right next to our table. There was an almighty crash and a one splinter of glass hit my spectacles as the explosion of items occurred. I was glad I wore specs because the glass would have hit me in the eye otherwise.
The next morning we bought tickets for Trainvision which, last year, was called Zocotren. It is a road train that encircles Toledo mainly on the outside of the walls. A new set of equipment was operating this year. Headphones were supplied with the tickets (we didn't use any) with commentaries in many languages. Last year it was a public address system in Spanish and English. We were sitting with a group of travellers from Portugal and they were a really friendly crowd! The best change to the journey was when we stopped at a viewpoint and were able to get out and take photos of Toledo across the river gorge. The view was wonderful.
The previous day, we had watched a group of young people dancing in Zocodover Plaza and today they turned up again. They brought a portable music amplifier (not switched to loud!) and put up posters to say what they were doing. The dance was hop and they performed it well. There they were, dancing away with the biggest smiles on their faces! I got plenty of video footage!
Later that afternoon we visited the Iglesia de Santo Tome where we knew there was a great painting by El Greco. The church was not beautiful in our opinion but when we stepped inside we spotted the painting of the Count of Orgaz's funeral. It was wonderful to see this great work - much better than the photos we had seen. El Greco's work was based on the story that because the Count of Orgaz was such a pious man that when he died two angels, St Augustine and St Stephen, came to the funeral. It is said that one funeral mourner in the painting was El Greco himself (self portrait) and he certainly included his son, Jorge Manuel in the painting.
That evening we took a taxi to a favourite restaurant of ours. As we got out of the car the heavens opened and we were treated to a long torrent of rain. It was a cloudburst in magnitude! We had to move from the outdoor covered area into the building as the rain was bouncing and wetting our legs as we sat at the table. This was a portent for the following journey. More of this later.
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