Toledo

We ended up skipping La Mancha--well, we drove through but didn't stop in any towns to see the windmills. We turned in the car in Toledo (good riddance; we've discovered we prefer planes and trains to automobiles) and headed to a museum. Honestly I can't even remember what the name was. It had ceramics. And El Greco. And a very talented artist who was friends with Pablo Neruda (a risque Chilean poet), but that's about all I could pick up since everything was in Spanish.

The cathedral at night as viewed from the rooftop terrace of our hostel.

The next day we went to the cathedral, which was noted as being the most ornate in all of Europe. Which is saying a lot. However, once I see a certain level of ornateness, it's as if my brain can't absorb any more, and so I have to say, I didn't walk in and think, "wow, here is a particularly ornate church."

I really wanted to see the gift from the city of Toledo in Ohio that was supposed to be in the treasury (Rick Steves didn't mention what it was), but we were in the middle of tour group hell and I found myself exiting the treasury as quickly as possible in order to avoid breaking the commandment against murder.

After a night in Toledo, we jumped on a high-speed train into Madrid...