This post is mainly going to focus on a single day: our morning trip to Toledo. Since there won't be as much to say about a single morning, I'll throw in a few other observations and stories.
Toledo was one of my favorite places during the entire trip. It's absolutely beautiful and almost fantasy-like. I've never seen a place with the classic moat, city walls, a palace, and such old architecture. It was truly majestic, and it introduced me to the first of many enormous cathedrals/basilicas that I would see throughout the trip. We did a walking tour, visited the cathedral, and visited a gold-working and metal-working factory. The outlook point that showed us a view of the entire city and the incredible cathedral were the highlights of the day for me by far. If I ever become a millionaire (or maybe it would require me to be a billionaire...), I would love to have a small vacation-y type of residence in this area. It's very calm and beautiful, and I would have enough photograph-worthy material to last me a lifetime...
After Toledo, we returned to Madrid and honestly didn't do much. It was a "free" afternoon that was followed by tapas that night. My boyfriend and I chose to forego the tapas because, a) It cost 24 euros, and we thought that the money was better spent elsewhere, and b) We hadn't been impressed with Spanish food thus far. That leads me to the discussion of the food I experienced in Spain. The consensus that almost everyone on the trip came to was that Spanish food was "edible, but not enjoyable". Most of it I could tolerate well enough to somewhat satisfy my hunger, especially since the eating schedule was positively wacky compared to the one I was accustomed to following. There were always three courses: soup, main dish, and dessert. I am not a soup person AT ALL, so I could usually tolerate few bites, but almost always left most of it in the bowl. I'm sure it made me look disrespectful and picky, but I can only force feed myself a homogenous, vegetable-based liquid for so long before I want to hurl. It always tasted okay...I just didn't want a ton of it. The meat was a tremendous disappointment at every restaurant. I'm used to marinated or spiced, tender, nice cuts of meat, and it seemed like the chicken/pork/shrimp/etc. was just thrown in a pan and cooked to extreme chewiness. I felt like I was eating leather surrounded by tasteless sauce at every restaurant we attended. The paella I had did not thrill me either. It was decent, but neon orange rice threw me off just a tad...
Just as a disclaimer, I'm not saying that all Spanish food sucks and that no one should like it. I'm not that kind of person. I personally did not care for the food that I had, but it could have been poor choice of restaurants by EF Tours or just my personal taste. I've known plenty of people who have studied abroad in Spain and LOVED the food. I'm just not one of those people... I will say that I did appreciate that there wasn't a ton of salt, cheese, and grease on everything in the restaurants. In the U.S., I avoid restaurants because I always feel bloated and nasty after eating sodium-filled, greasy, unhealthy foods. However, I would say that a happy medium between Spain bland and American over-salted would have been my personal preference.
As a side note, to make up some of the calories we were missing due to eight hours of walking per day on half empty stomachs, my boyfriend and I went to a McDonald's across the street (I was shocked to see so many American fast food joints in Spain). We didn't get a meal, but we did get a McFlurry. Spain McFlurries, for anyone interested, have only one size: small...very small. They also put the toppings on top of the ice cream instead of blending it in. I thought it was very wise to only have small sizes available, and I actually kind of enjoyed mixing the ice cream myself instead of having it chopped up throughout. It's the small things like the differences in McFlurries that I noticed the most while abroad...
Anyway, I've gone off on enough of a food tangent for today. Here are a few pics of Toledo and of the Príncipe Pío mall where we got the McFlurries later that night.
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