Toledo, Aranjuez y Segovia: Please Don’t Tell Me that You Ate Piglet :/

Once again, we’re back with another edition of The Travelogue. I’m Andrew and I’ll be your host today. We’re very happy to have you on board for what will surely be a wild ride. Our journey begins many moons ago when we left Madrid (for the first time) bound for Toledo, one of the oldest cities in Castilla-La Mancha and the former capital of Spain. Upon our arrival in Toledo, we were almost immediately greeted by the narrow roads and cobblestone streets for which much of Spain is famous.

Toledo

After a strenuous hike of at least a half-hour up the various hills and roads of the old city of Toledo, we arrived at our hostel which just so happened to be located in the former Jewish Quarter. Toledo has become known for being the place where the three Abrahamic religions coexisted in the centuries leading up to the Reconquista and first Inquisition, which both reached their peaks in 1492. I wrote a paper about the three cultures for one of my classes at la Complu and while it’s very true that Jews lived with Muslims that lived with Christians, I concluded that at least part of what’s made out to be a great achievement is a bit of a sales pitch.

Our first order of business after checking in and settling down for a few minutes was to find food. This is only our second blog post in which we recount our travel experiences but it’s likely that you’ve already noticed a theme: we move, we eat, we move, we eat, we move, we eat some more. I think that it’s a pretty good system that we’ve developed for ourselves 🙂

Where To Eat

Bar Skala
What we ordered: a tuna and red pepper salad, grilled mushrooms with garlic, and pinchos of venison sausage and morcilla. That being said, we don’t think that there’s anything bad on their menu!

Bar Ludeña
What we ordered: carcamusas (a regional stew and specialty that is not to be missed) and bacalao with ratatouille. Good, but a trip there is worth it for the carcamusas alone.

El Trébol
An inexpensive bar catering to budget travelers, this place isn’t exactly a Michelin-star establishment. The bombas, however, are a delicious explosion of fried flavor. Would recommend.

We also did a good job of seeing the sights. I’d visited Toledo before but, of course, this was Emma’s first time. She said—and I agree with this sentiment—that the city felt a bit like EPCOT (not that either of us has been) or a movie set. It was a bit strange to spend time in a place that has been so well preserved for centuries and yet was also a fully functioning place to live. A few small grocery stores, many more restaurants, and public services make the old city habitable for its residents.

On the other hand, it was refreshing to be somewhere where we knew exactly what was going on: the city’s economy is largely funded by the tourist’s euro. I’d even go so far as to say that Toledo has marketed itself as the prime town to visit for tourists visiting Madrid in search of a more “authentic” Spanish experience, commonly in the form of a day trip. Maybe that’s why all the ghosts come out at night!

On our last day, Emma and I hiked (that’s an exaggeration: we walked along the road and worked against some elevation) to a lookout point across the Tagus River. It was a beautiful day and I’m really happy that we were able to enjoy the views of Toledo together.

We also visited the cutest museum in the city before we caught the bus to Aranjuez: the Manchego Cheese Museum! We learned all about the process involved in the production of Manchego cheese from three tiny rooms and then had the chance to try three cheese samples aged for different amounts of time (3, 6, and 16 months) for the low low price of €5.

Aranjuez

Ooh, we’re somewhere new! We hopped on a bus and an hour later, we found ourselves in Aranjuez, the southernmost city in the province of Madrid. Here we are hanging out and making smart choices at an old water wheel a half hour’s walk from the city.

And here we are in front of a very impressive fountain near the city center:

We went to Aranjuez to spend a few days in the company of Amber and Hugo, friends of mine from my year abroad. It was so wonderful to see them again! Here we are in front of the Royal Palace at sunset:

Madrid (Pt. II)

And just like that, we’re back in Madrid. Since our next stop is Segovia, north of Madrid, we decided to spend a couple of nights at an Airbnb in Usera, a neighborhood that’s become known for being the Chinatown of Madrid. Anywho, here are a few photos of us eating kebabs and hanging out along the Manzanares River in a fantastic “third space” known to the locals as Madrid Río.

Segovia

Wow, that’s quite an aqueduct! Welcome to Segovia, one of the oldest cities in Castilla y León. The aqueduct was built by the Romans over 2,000 years ago and, perhaps more impressively, it supplied Segovia and its immediate surroundings with clean drinking water until the mid 19th century. We didn’t know it yet, but we were superbly lucky to capture this and the following photos on such a clear day.

Here we are posing for the most candid of cameras at a lookout point next to the aqueduct:

We can’t forget the food! Don’t worry, we have such regional delicacies to share. All of the restaurants in and around the touristic center of the city have exactly the same menus, and while there are some more well-known restaurants in Segovia, we think that you’d get just about the same dishes of the same quality wherever you choose to dine. There are two specialties that we have to recommend: judiones de la Granja are the largest white beans that I’ve ever seen and are used in a cocido, or stew, made with various bits of pork. There’s also the infamous cochinillo, or roast suckling pig. Yes, it’s an entire piglet that’s roasted for days on end and is supposed to be so tender that it can be cut with a plate. In order to avoid looking a dead pig in the face, Emma opted for only a leg and perhaps some of its midsection. Indeed, the meat was incredibly tender and as a treat, the dish also came with two slices of zucchini!

I lied when I said that we had only two specialties to share. If you know anything about me, it’s probably that I love dessert. The ponche segoviano, or Segovian punch, was not nearly as violent as the name might suggest. Simply, it’s a sponge cake filled with pastry cream and covered with a thin layer of marzipan and some powdered sugar. If you’re lucky, like we were, it’ll be served with strawberries, whipped cream, and some ice cream. That was a good day.

Finally, some architecture! Behind us, you’ll see the Alcázar de Segovia, which was built in 1120 and is said to have served as the inspiration for Walt Disney’s design of Cinderella’s castle.

And here’s the view from the bell tower of the Cathedral of Segovia! If you look closely, you’ll be able to see the aqueduct next to the cupula in the photo on the left and on the right, there we are standing under a bell that is hundreds of years old, weighs many kilograms, and would surely smush us completely if it were to fall from its resting place on the yoke.

That’ll do it for the second installment of The Travelogue! It’s been a busy week and a day since we last updated you. We’ve traveled many kilometers and are now sitting in our Airbnb in Valencia, where we are privy to the sounds of fireworks, firecrackers, and band music at random intervals in celebration of Las Fallas. Stay tuned for more!

With appreciation for exploration,

A