Getting there. Part 2

We landed at Madrid as scheduled, but then had to find our way to Toledo, some 50km away. According to Mr Google nothing could be simpler. Jump on a train from the airport to Madrid’s Atocha station then get a high-speed train from there to Toledo. That’s fine, except when you discover that a key tunnel is closed for six months due to a network upgrade and you have to change trains just to reach the city. Fortunately there were plenty of helpful railway staff around to get us (literally) on the right track. Aside from a 90-minute wait at Atocha for the Toledo train, it all went to plan. The Spanish trains are very modern, and are certainly the smoothest and quietest that we’ve ever experienced.
We’d seen advertising signs for Uber everywhere at the airport and the railway stations, but when we tried to call one up at Toledo station a message appeared saying that the service was unavailable in the area. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be too many taxis around either, so we decided we’d leg it. The area was flat and Google Maps told us that our hotel was only 1.4km away. The first 1km was easy, a nice flat run, but that’s when we discovered a serious shortcoming of Google Maps. It gives linear distances but provides no clue as to how far one has to move in the vertical plane. The weather was quite muggy, and that last 0.4km up a steep cobblestoned road wasn’t a heap of fun with our backpacks and suitcases, We were happy to finally reach our hotel. Later, on discovering that most of the hotels were some distance further up the hill, we realised that we’d been comparatively fortunate. By that stage we hadn’t seen a bed for about 48 hours and had managed just a few hours of not very deep sleep on the flights. We decided that overall we’d handled things pretty well.
After unpacking, showering and snoozing we headed out for dinner. Brian decided to try a couple of the local specialties, so had a soup-like entree contains beans and partridge followed by some venison. Mary’s choices were a little less successful, but both of us were more interested in hitting the sack and catching up on our sleep.Read more