Toledo 🇪🇸

Holy Toledo! What a day trip 😊

The old Spanish capital of Toledo is only an hour away and so off we went for the day.

The bus followed the circular road around the outside of the walled city and we stopped at the lookout for amazing views across the river. 

Then to a Sword factory where they hand make swords and jewellery using gold thread - fascinating to watch the technique.

We were dropped at the bottom of the city walls where there are a series of escalators that take you up to the old town area.  

First stop the famous Cathedral Primada.  Wow oh wow!  It's so very ornate and they were preparing the floats for the Easter parade!  

Then to the Jewish quarter and a visit to a synagogue.  We walked to one of the old city gates and then meandered through the narrow winding streets with shuttered windows and window boxes of flowers looking so pretty 😊

We walked around the Alcazar which is an impressive square shaped building high in the town.

Once back in town we visited the Botanic gardens which had a small section of Spring flowers in bloom and lovely manicured hedged gardens. 

The Prado museum had a huge queue and so we opted to go to the Botanic gardens with a view to see the queue afterwards.  It turns out that the art gallery is free from 6-8pm and so everyone was lined up for free entry (saving 15 Euro).  We joined the then much shorter queue and had an hour viewing the works of Reubens, Rembrandt, a Picasso and many other artists' works.  It's an excellent gallery and the volume of large scale works is impressive.

Dinner at a local restaurant 😊