EZ Honeymoon: Holy Toledo! Part 1 of 3

I first learned about Toledo in my high school Spanish class, during a companion video to one of the lessons. According to the video, the expression “holy Toledo” originates from the presence of the 3 primary world religions.  First there was a thriving Jewish community in Roman times, later the the city belonged to the Visigoths, then the Moors, and finally, it became the seat the seat of the Christian church in Spain in the11th century following the Moors’ defeat. This blend of styles and influences makes the city a truly incredible place, and the start of forever with my wonderful wife was a perfect opportunity to experience this UNESCO World Heritage site.

The city is perched atop a hill that occupies a small peninsula created by the Targus river, which we didn’t really see it until we were just about entering the city. The drive from Madrid had been fairly enjoyable because we left after rush hour, but I forgot about the part of the video where they talked about Toledo having some of the narrowest streets in the world.  Even in our relatively tiny car, we had to pull the mirrors in so there was room to pass through the one-way alleys. I think EZ was moderately impressed with my driving, until we had to park.

We managed to get some sleep during the overnight flight so we felt pretty good right up to the start of our second lap through the Toledo city center.  The house we rented through Airbnb was located at weird triangle corner, our KeepGo service did not come through with the text about parking from our host, and the GPS struggled with the dense streets of an ancient Roman city. While we did spot our house and garage, I was completely ignorant of the removable bollards, and we were waiting on the cell phone to call us back and connect us to the host, so I sat in the way of several cars. At this point, realizing how exhausted I really was, I rolled down the window and tried to formulate the Spanish sentence for “I am a moron, but pretty sure I am supposed to park in that garage that has a giant well and several metal posts in front of it.”  Just so you know, I actually never knew enough Spanish to say that, and even if I had, the stress and hunger consumed too much cognitive power for me to string it together.

Fortunately, our wonderful host, Isabel, spotted us, and came to our rescue.  Turns out there is a key that lets you remove one of the bollards, and all we had to do was back in and up a 2×4 into the garage that was barely wide enough to hold the car.  I will spare myself the embarrassment of our detailed parking adventure, but twenty minutes and a tire-flung 2×4 later, we were unloaded off to lunch with several recommendations from Isabel.

EZ Honeymoon Series:
First Things First