Twisty little passages all the same

Post by Charlie: Like lots of cities in Europe, Toledo has an old town which is mainly the domain of the tourists and the people who serve them and which has lots of narrow streets and quaint old buildings. Around the old town there is usually a modern town where the locals live and work. Our hotel is a on little lane where cars cannot go. This is looking down from the door.

Church warning signs

Post by Charlie: This one could use some updating in the technology area although the people-related parts are just the same. Comment by Wynette: Notice we took a picture of the “take no pictures” sign.  Nearly everyone was taking pictures so we figured it was ok to take pictures as long as we were careful not to use the flash.  It was an amazing cathedral. Not a poor one.  They had many original paintings by El Greco, Goya, many other famous painters.

Swords and knives

Toledo is know for swords and weaponry. The shops show a wide variety of fancy swords, seem to be the real thing. Not for people going back on the plane I guess but maybe they ship them. Also knight’s armor and especially helmets, right out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. They branched out into kitchen knives and cleavers. Does anyone really use a cleaver this big?

Santa Caterina Market 2

They had whole booths for eggs:

The goose eggs (at the far left) were pretty big but then we ran across this one:

These are ostrich eggs, only 28 euro each.

The market is mostly fresh food but they had deli stuff also. We plan to make a picnic tomorrow from there. Today we ate at a little cafe in the market. It was very good. They say Barcelona is a foodie town, that seems to be true.

We sat right by the cooks, this guy was friendly and was making jokes with us and took the above picture. He was the grill cook; to the left was the station for the guy who did things in frying pans and pots.

Notice the writing above on the back of his shirt, menjar i beure.  Those of you who know some Spanish know that that is not Spanish. It is a good example of Catalan.  Google Translate tells us it means “food and drink”.

Barcelona Markets

We love to go to markets when we travel. Today we went to the Santa Caterina Market, the has a festive colored and wavy roof which we didn’t get a picture of. This is not the more famous La Boqueria market just off the middle of the Ramblas, our hotel recommended this one. It was an amazing place with beautiful fruits and vegetables:

We got some strawberries for breakfast tomorrow and some tiny little bananas that we heard are really good, from Columbia I think he said.

The market is all food. Here is ome of the meat and fish: