From Toledo to Salamanca

Toledo sits like a medieval fever dream on a hill, coiled tight with winding alleys and ghosts of empires past. The kind of place where El Greco’s elongated saints stare you down with those haunted eyes, and steel blades once flashed beneath dusty cloaks. The city clings to the cliffs above the Tagus River like a cathedral built on a hangover. Roman, Visigothic, Moorish, Christian, every layer of conquest stacked like a tapas menu from hell.

I wander through the narrow medieval alleys of the old imperial capital. The magnificent cathedral provides a brief escape from the scorching heat, and I find a room with wooden panels so full of carved details that it would make Dan Brown go bananas.

Alcazar of Toledo.

And don’t get me started on the local specialty: marzipan. If I were to stay any longer in Toledo, the locals would probably had forced me out of the city with burning torches for eating all of their sweet stuff.

View from the top of the cathedral in Salamanca.

Instead we drive west to Salamanca, famous for having one of Europe’s oldest universities. The task of the day became to find that elusive frog sculpture hidden in the elaborate decorations of the front door.

From Toledo’s tangled past to Salamanca’s academic swagger, this is Spain raw and unfiltered, far from the flamenco-and-paella fantasy. Let’s see what tomorrow brings in the Iberian Peninsula. I hope it starts with a cortado.