Last night everyone decided that they wanted to go to Toledo for the day today so we took a half hour train ride out there. Toledo is a small fortress city that is surrounded on three sides by the Tagus River, which is the same river that Lisbon is on. It has a rich history and many different people have ruled the city throughout the ages including the Visigoths, the Moors, the Arabs and the Romans.
The city is also renowned for their sword making and their damascene ware (black steel inlaid with gold, silver or copper thread). When the taxis dropped us off at about 10 am in the center of the city this man immediately started talking to us about how the cathedral didn't open until 10:30 and that just down the road there was a cooperative of damascene and sword artisans, so being the tourists that we were we followed him to the site and got to watch someone as he was making some damascene brooches which was really amazing.
After watching the craftsman for about ten minutes we went into the store and let the ladies shop around some.
The store also had a lot of swords and replica guns that my dad and I found fun to play with. We both really wanted to buy a sword and bring it home, but we both thought it would be too big a hassle to check it on the plane.
Once the women were finished shopping we headed to the Catedral (cathedral), which was now open. The cathedral was pretty impressive and as I was trying to take pictures of the façade I realized I had broken a cardinal rule. I forgot to check my camera battery before we left Madrid and I had left my extra battery in our hotel room, AARRGH!!!! But thanks to Auntie Shirley I still have some pictures to post. Once we went insde the cathedral it made you a little suspicious of the Catholic Church in some ways because of the opulence that it was decorated in and the magnitude of the whole cathedral. There were 54 woodcarvings all around the choir stalls and above the woodcarvings were alabaster carvings. Without trying to be too long-winded, the cathedral had about twenty little chapels around the perimeter of the cathedral; a Sacristia that housed paintings by El Greco, Goya and even one by Raphael; a Claustro which housed about thirty cloaks worn by archbishops throughout history; and a Tesoro (treasury) which housed many lavish artifacts that the church had used in the past including a three meter high monstrance that contains gold that was brought back by Christopher Columbus.
After the cathedral everyone was getting a little hungry so we found a restaurant called La Campana Gorda not too far away. They had a pretty good menu and I ended up ordering the Perdiz Estofada a la Toledana, which is stewed partridge and supposedly a local specialty. My mom ended up ordering Rabo de Toro or oxtail stew, which she had been looking for since we landed in Barcelona. The partridge stew was pretty good. It tasted a little stronger than chicken and the braising liquid was light and a little vinegary, which helped to enhance the flavor of the chicken.
The oxtail stew ended up being better than I had expected, especially since I am used to the Chinese style oxtail stews. This one was actually very flavorful with a lot of garlic, cumin and coriander as a base and the meat was cooked long enough so that it was fall-off-the-bone tender unlike the other European oxtail dishes I've tried.
Once we finished lunch we headed over to a tourist "train" that we had heard about that takes you around the city for just five euros. The tour was a little disappointing, but it was worth it with some of the panoramic views of the city that we saw (damn that dead battery!!!).
Once we finished our ride we headed back to the train station to go back to Madrid. Back in Madrid we wandered around our hotel and ended up finding a restaurant called Wagaboo which looked very trendy inside and it had a combination of Italian and Asian dishes, but they advertised hand-pulled Chinese noodles so we had to give it a try. All the chefs in the kitchen were Chinese, which calmed some of our fears and the food actually turned out to be pretty good. Even the Italian pasta that we tried was flavorful. It was a surprisingly good ending to our trip and now it's time to get ready for a 24-hour travel day.
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