Return to Spain

I started this post on the train Wednesday morning, but then vacation got in the way of writing. Now it’s Friday evening and we’re taking a break from the festival in Torrijos, so I’ll write some more.

Wednesday morning was nice, because we didn’t have to get out of bed quite so quickly, and we didn’t necessarily need to rush to leave. After showering and packing up most of our stuff, Barry and I walked to the grocery store to grab some things for breakfast. We went around the corner to the post office to mail something, then back to the apartment. We had a nice breakfast of fruit, yogurt, cheese, little French sausages, and the bread we purchased Tuesday in Cucugnan. (Delicious!) We also made some coffee to help us through the day. I called a taxi which arrived promptly at 10:30 as requested, and we took a short, stuffy ride to the train station. I checked in with Europcar to make sure everything had been in order with the car, and we had a short wait before the train arrived.

We climbed on board and had a much easier time stashing our bags before the train pulled out of the station. We had some nice mountain views on the first part of the trip just south of Perpignan. The stop in Barcelona looked familiar. We traveled down the coast a while to Tarragona before heading across the countryside toward Madrid. Along the way we saw a very arid landscape with a mixture of white rocky cliffs, irrigated fields, quirky red hills, shallow valleys with more farming and natural vegetation, quaint small towns, industrial areas, and cargo transport infrastructure. Every time we went trough a tunnel my ears popped. We made lunch out of our remaining fruit, cheese, and yummy bread, along with some olive tapenade Gywen bought Tuesday at one of the wineries.

We switched trains in Madrid, wandering around a bit looking lost, because the signage wasn’t fantastic. About an hour later we were on the train to Toledo, and after about half an hour on that train we arrived. Toledo was impressive from the start, with some interesting buildings visible from the train platform and the station itself was beautiful, covered in colorful tiles. Our good friend Dean was waiting for us there and it was wonderful greeting him for the first time in ten years. He had come directly from work in his small car, so a few minutes later his husband Antonio showed up with the larger car so we could fit all of us and our bags. Barry went with Dean while Gywen and I rode with Antonio past the stunning city walls and around to the other side of the Medieval capital for the views from across the river. We stopped for a drink while overlooking the river and the city there, before heading into the center of the old city….

Toledo view.

I tell you – there has been no time to blog. Here I am again on Sunday morning, writing on the train back to Barcelona. We’re zipping through the countryside seeing interesting flat-topped hills, olive trees, distant mountains, and overcast skies. I just woke up from a little nap and I hope I can get this post finished and at least start the next one.

Me and Gywen waiting for the car parkers
in Zocodover.

Wednesday evening Dean and Antonio walked us through historic Toledo on the most level route they could navigate for us, beginning at the Zocodover market area. We passed shops on our way to Santa Iglesia Cathedral, Cardinal’s Palace, and City Hall then walked through part of the Jewish Quarter before passing through some former convents that have been re-purposed as University buildings. We finally arrived at a restaurant for dinner which was in a dormer abbey. Our table was in a private space downstairs, a small corner of the cellar with an arched brick ceiling. We feasted on a meal of multiple small dishes, culminating with some delicious venison from the nearby mountains.

Marzipan replica of a building facade,
in a shop along the streets of Toledo.

View of the church in Torrijos, from the apartment balcony,
just before the fireworks.

After dinner we drove to Torrijos, where Dean and Antonio live. Antonio’s family owns an apartment building there. They have a nice apartment on the third floor, his sister Carmen lives downstairs with her family, and an Aunt occupies another apartment. They keep a recently renovated apartment on the fourth floor for Antonio’s parents in case they ever need it, and this apartment was given over to us for our stay. They haven’t managed to install an elevator yet, so we carried the bags all the way up and got settled in. Gywen went to bed but we stayed up to watch the midnight fireworks from the apartment balcony. We arrived during the annual Torrijos festival Le Sementera, a celebration of the harvest that lasts for five days. This was the night for fireworks, and the town put on quite a fantastic show. I’m not sure Barry agreed, but I thought they were every bit as good as the fireworks in Barcelona although without the beach setting. The fireworks were constant – no breaks in the action like we have in small town American displays – and there were frequently as many as 6-8 rockets exploding at once. The show included some cool spiral fireworks and some very colorful ones, as well as quite a few that had secondary explosions of thick, poofy sparkles. It was quite a satisfying “welcome” to small-town Spain. We fell into bed shortly after the fireworks, although the local party went on well into the night, as evidenced by the music we could hear most of the night from inside the apartment.

And thus concludes Wednesday’s post. We went through some pretty tree-covered mountains and grape-filled valleys as we approached the coast. We are now approaching Sants Station in Barcelona.