Absolutely smashed by Barcelona (and the fact Spain has more bars than the US!), and while praying to the patron saint of hangovers, St Ruggling, we jumped on a train and headed to Toledo. We had a short stop along the way in Madrid to change trains, but didn’t have time to achieve much other than the essential act for any European holiday: paying to use the dunny in a train station. As usual, you can only pay with 1s or 2s. #repeatedjokes

We only had a short time in Toledo, but that’s all you really need. We’d heard the Cathedral was one of the best in Europe so thought we’d get Lea her church fix and went for a look. Totally awesome Cathedral, but, thanks to Lea’s research, and no thanks to the staff not telling us, we discovered our hotel had a rooftop bar and Holy Toledo! What a view we had of the setting sun over the former capital of Spain.

Very early on, Madrid was off to a great start (NB: we saw the Prado, Royal palace and Guernica and all that other stuff while in town) our first European pillow!  Madrid was also home to our favourite walking tour for the trip, but still reeling from the effects of the Spanish flu, James was very careful not to be peer pressured by the guide to rub any of the many bronze statues to avoid getting next plague.  Fun fakt: The plague was actually spread by people touching statues for “luck” all over Europe, hence its original name of the plaque, subsequently mispelled over various outbreaks.  Despite these great efforts of will, James very quickly submitted to peer pressue by sharing a glass of wine with some random old guy in a market straight afterwards.

Most of our time in our final city was spent soaking up the amazing tapas culture of Madrid, better than Barcelona and potentially challenging that of our time in Andalucia. Some jamazing jamon was had as well as our first chorizo con sidre, or in Engish: sausage in cider…

Thank you Madrid for an incredible last adventure for PS2017.

PS-we’ll be back….or hasta la vista…Spainy.