Thursday, November 2, dawned cloudy and rainy, and after breakfast we checked that our packing was complete, and went down to wait for our cab. It eventually came, getting us to the train station in good enough time. To get to Toledo, we had to make a quick change in Madrid, since there are no direct trains between Córdoba and there, but everything was good and efficient at the Atocha station, the one that had gotten blown up so disastrously.

The scene on our arrival in Toledo was not good: rainy, and no cabs in evidence. We estimated that we waited longer for a cab there than we had spent on the train from Madrid. It was becoming clear that Toledo may welcome and expect tourists in Summer, but in late Fall, the townsfolk are not thinking about foreigners.

We did finally get to our hotel, in a fairly grubby part of town, and since it was about time for lunch, we decided to have lunch at the restaurant directly adjoining. It turned out to be an excellent meal, with a terrific shoulder of lamb that was described as roast (“asado”), but seemed to me to be braised. Very moist and tasty, at any rate.

All this time, the rain had been coming down. After lunch, we went upstairs for our rainjackets, and went out being the tourists, but without our cameras, partly because it was so grim and dark out, partly because the rain would be a threat to them. The old city is on a hill, but you already knew that from El Greco’s famous painting of Toledo. We climbed up through streets that were unusually ill-marked, so that our map was only a partial guide to anywhere that we might want to get to. One of these places was the Greco Museum, and in trying to find it, we walked in a closed loop! This is the sort of thing I do all the time when I’m alone, but Mark has a sense of direction, and I was surprised when we realized what had happened.

The rain was intermittent, and we unzipped our rain gear whenever we could, but we still got sopping wet inside it from condensation. After a quick stop into the Cathedral, which was unusually dark, mostly because of the weather, I suppose, we used its location on our map to give us a guide to which way to go to get to the Greco Museum. We found it after a lot of false turns, and paid our way in. It was rather disappointing: the paintings fall into two classes: portraits done in the 1580’s, and a bunch of paintings of saints done around 1610, a few years before his death. These last were all the same size, and though somewhat individualized, they gave a strong feeling of being painted to a commission and from a pattern. They seemed routine to me, and I did not feel that I had seen much El Greco there.

For some reason, my journal does not mention the one big Greco experience of our visit, when we stopped into a little church to see The Burial of Count Orgaz. Now that is a monument! A really wonderful work, repaying close and sustained attention. There was a crowd of people gazing at it, and I tore myself away somewhat unwillingly.

We made our way back to the hotel, and since we still felt quite full from the lunch we had, we just had a nightcap and went to bed.

Friday, November 3, we went down to the hotel ground floor for breakfast, and were the only ones there. The place seemed rather dead, and who knows, maybe we were the only guests. The breakfast spread was almost as sumptuous as in the busy hotels of Sevilla and Granada, and I guessed that most of it got eaten up by the staff when we walked out the door.

We went back to the Cathedral, and to tell the truth I don’t at this late date recall a single thing about it. My journal says, “[there] were the usual Spanish baroque excesses, riots of saints with gilt and crystal. There were some Greco paintings in the museum section of the Cathedral, but still the single-figure saint-pictures that the El Greco Museum had been filled with.” When we went out of the cathedral, it was still raining, and we decided to go for pastry and coffee in a nearby place. Then we looked for the Museum of Contemporary Art, but like so many places in Toledo, it was closed for restoration. We wound up at the Synagogue of El Tránsito, a place that was featured the next day or so in an article in the New York Times. The synagogue was mildly interesting, but it was clear that the purpose of the place was to teach the Spaniards about Jews and Judaism.

We had lunch in an undistinguished but crowded restaurant, and at this time, Mark let it out that he had had enough of Toledo. I think that in nicer weather, we could have enjoyed the town much more, since it really is picturesque.

Saturday, November 4, we left Toledo early for Madrid, and on arrival we went right across the street from the hotel and into the Prado. My desire was to see all the Flemish art that I had been reading about for fifty years or so, and as much Goya as I could digest. No Velázquez this time: he’ll have to wait till a longer stay in Madrid. We were leaving Sunday fairly early, after all. The Flemish stuff is wonderful, and I could have spent a lot more time there than I did. But Mark didn’t seem to be as enchanted with it as I was, so we went upstairs for the Goya, which also was a treat. Before long, though, we were suffering eye-exhaustion, and left.

Not much more to report: I’ll refer you to Mark’s page for these last days for all that information. Our dinner in Madrid was very disappointing, and our trip home was marred by a late take-off from Madrid, so that we missed our connection in Newark. All too painful to type up.

The trip as a whole was wonderful, though, even if we decided in Toledo that it was a couple of days too long in duration. I’ll have a lot of nice memories of our Country Walkers tour, and of the folks we walked with, as well as of our fine days of touring on our own.