Another marvellous day in Toledo

The weather seemed to have improved a bit, so we headed out towards the old Jewish quarter which contains a number of interesting places we’d been recommended to visit. Our starting point was the Synagogue of Santa Maria la Bianca, hardly a traditional name for a synagogue one might think. It was built in the 12th century but in the 15th century it became a church. One can imagine the turmoil which led to that change, but it does explain the name. The building itself is impressive with Moorish architectural influences, but the displays inside the building weren’t all that interesting. Furthermore, no English language translations were available, which made it hard for us to understand the history of the place.

A couple of hundred metres along the road was the Sephardic Museum, aka the Synagogue of El Transito, which we also visited. That was far more interesting and we were provided with sheets containing English language translations, which made the visit far more interesting and relevant.

Finally, we visited the El Greco Museum. The 16th century painter is a favourite son of Toledo. At first the building was thought to have been El Greco’s own house but more recent research suggests otherwise. Even though it is located in the same short stretch of street as the two synagogues, El Greco certainly wasn’t Jewish. Many of his paintings have religious themes centred around Christ and his disciples. For us it was a very interesting and worthwhile visit.

By this time, which was mid-afternoon, the wet weather had really set in. Fortunately we had brollies and other wet weather gear but it took us a good half hour to get back to the hotel where we could dry ourselves out. The cobblestones are really slippery when they’re wet, so we were walking very carefully on the steep streets.

With it being so wet we decided to eat dinner nearby rather than venture back up the hill in the pouring rain. The place we chose was pleasant enough though we got a bit of a laugh from the fact that all the dishes, no matter what else they contained, came with chips. Hardly a traditional Spanish style. We are deliberately avoiding tuning into any news from Australia or any mother part of the world, but purely by chance we discovered that there has been flooding in northern Spain. Clearly we were on the very edge of it, so can count ourselves lucky that what we experienced was fairly minor.Read more