Spain Week 3: Toledo & Barcelona
We started off this week with a day trip to Toledo and a stop at a local vineyard.
We left Madrid around 9am and made our first stop in front of Mirador del Valle’s viewpoint. This was a great start to our visit as we were able to get a full panoramic view before we headed into the hills of the city. The trip started with an hour long walking tour of the city. Luckily it was still early enough in the morning that it wasn’t too hot yet as we explored. We visited the Synagogue of Saint Mary the White and the Toledo Cathedral before ending the main tour in Plaza de Zocodover.
We had about an hour of free time, so we went to buy some cheesecake for lunch and some Mazapán de Toledo to toke home for the charcuterie board for the week!
After our free time, we headed to the vineyard: Casa de Valle. We had a tour around the whole operations. It started off in the field before we headed indoors to see the fermenting, bottling and distribution systems they had in place. The tour ended with a sampling of three of their wines, and off we went back to Madrid.
The next day we walked down to Parque del Rio to explore a new area of the city. About half way through our walk, the sky started to get a little bit grey - Steinar insisted it wasn’t rain and there wasn’t anything on the radar. With about 20 minutes left in our walk back there was a little bit of a sprinkle and a breeze which felt great in the heat! It wasn’t pleasant for long since it quickly turned into a thunderstorm and we got drenched on our way back. Once we were back, Kuzco was very excited to get some storm watching in from the balcony and it kept raining for most of the evening.
He loves watching from the balcony!
Our train to Barcelona left at 8am the next day, and we arrived there around noon. After dropping off our bags, we headed to Squiddy for lunch and then set off to see as much as we could. We went to the Mercat de la Boqueria, the Columbus Monument, the Cathedral of Barcelona, and then over to the Palau de la Música Catalana for a tour. The theatre was incredible and the walls were covered in decorations. We were able to hear a demonstration on the organ while we were there as well. We headed straight to Museu Picasso from there and explored the different exhibits. I think this was one of Steinar’s favorite museums so far on the trip!
Our adventure through the city didn’t stop as we headed from there to see the outside of Casa Batlló and Casa Milà on our way to see the Sagrada Familia. We got a few pictures with the new additions to the cathedral since we’d been there in 2022, and then headed over to Sagradas Tapas for an early dinner! Luckily that was our last stop on our walk, so after dinner we headed back to our hotel go to sleep.
Our next day included a trip from Barcelona to Monserrat. We explored the top of the mountain as much as we could. We were able to go into the Santa Maria de Montserrat Abbey and The Black Madonna and explore some of the other buildings around. The Pope had just visited a couple weeks before us so there were still many welcome banners for him! Unfortunately for us, all of the trails surrounding the area were closed due to the high temps and risk of wildfires. For lunch, we headed to Oller del Mas for a three course meal and wine tasting in their vineyard. The location is in the perfect spot at the bottom of the mountain to look up and still see the jagged top of Monserrat. After the tour ended we headed to dinner and then back to the hotel before another early morning!
On our last day in Barcelona, we headed to Costa Brava to explore the coastline via kayak. It was a great day trip and we were able to see so much from the water. While we were kayaking we were able to get into the water in a few different spots swim and jump off some of the taller rocks around the water (no cliffs I promise!) After the adventure in the water, we headed back to shore for a lunch picnic and another couple hours on the beach before heading back to Barcelona! We didn’t have much time to explore Barcelona before our train back to Madrid, so we grabbed a quick tapas dinner and headed to the train station.
(Unfortunately the pictures on this adventure didn’t turn out too well)
Luckily there was no train delay this time and we arrived back in Madrid a little before midnight. We took the weekend to recover as we had racked up over 70,000 steps in our three days in Barcelona!
