Toledo = good people, good city

The Madrid Airport has always seemed like one of the more user-friendly in Europe. Everything is in good condition and well-marked and well-organized. They’ve also long had some of the best orange juice that I’ve ever tasted: everywhere in the airport, in any café where you see one of those juicer machines.

Getting from the Airport to Atocha Station is not really that easy… I think it was 26 Metro stops on 3 different lines, the first time I’ve done that route. And for understandable reasons, Atocha’s security procedures are even tighter than on my last time there in 2002.

But the train to Toledo is perfect… Fast and smooth, and only 8 or 9 Euros for a one-way ticket. It also took only thirty minutes, not the full hour I expected.

As for the people in Toledo, they are collectively the nicest set of humans I have met in years. Not one sourpuss or con artist yet. Not even a neutral person yet: all have been exceptionally warm and helpful. They could easily have gotten away with setting the taxi meters to charge 15 Euros for the trip from the train station to the old city; instead, they charge 5. It almost feels unfair to the driver, and you end up dropping a tip on top of it just because they’re selling themselves short. The people in this hotel are sweethearts. The café waiters are very friendly. Every time I got lost tonight (easy to do in medieval labyrinths like this one) I’d stumble into the nearest hotel to ask directions, and every single one of those people helped me as if I were a family member.

Actually, I was told this about Spain before I ever set foot here– that few if any countries on earth welcome outsiders into group fun more than Spain. My friends have shared many stories over the years about ending up at restaurant tables in this country with complete strangers and actually being invited to join in a whole series of evening’s activities with these same strangers. A few of my friends have added that they try to identify themselves a bit by telling stories about what they do, but the Spanish strangers don’t even want to hear it; they just want to let you in on the fun.

Back to Toledo… It’s hilly and labyrinthine. The Visigoths were here (in a sense, they still are). The Inquisition was once here.

Biggest surprise so far? The old city is a bit more “lived in” than I expected. For some reason I imagined it more as a sort of museum, but there are plenty of shops and restaurants here. Also, I didn’t picture it as quite this hilly. But some of the streets in Toledo are very steep.

My only minor complaint so far is the really weak, mediocre pop music being piped through the public sound system in the shopping district tonight. In fact, I’ve never quite understood the need for public music for anything other than parades and park concerts. Musical taste is something so deeply personal, and so deeply variable, that it’s almost impossible to come up with music that won’t annoy someone. The best solution is always to come up with some sort of musical lowest common denominator, and that means you either get elevator music or else watery mainstream pop. Even World Heritage City Toledo has fallen into that trap tonight.

But that’s a minor issue. This was well worth the effort, and it’s a complete bonus. I woke up this morning in Maastricht expecting to sleep in Cairo.