Day 11 - Toledo - June 9

We went to Toledo without the Espinoza’s today. They took the train to Segovia instead. We left the house about the same time. We were able to get to the train station and on to Toledo just fine. Once we arrived in Toledo, we bought a map for 2 Euro and took the bus to the top of the hill and the main center plaza of the old city. The first thing we wanted to do was get lunch. The Espinoza’s recommended an Italian pizza restaurant by the Greco museum at the far end of town. It isn’t a big city in the old part where we were; probably a 2 mile square radius; all in narrow winding alleyways, like a big maze. We walked to the other side of the city to find this pizza place. We were trying to follow the map, but we wandered quite a bit because the kids were very interested in the shops along the way. Several of them, especially Josh, loved all the swords and daggers. We never did find the pizza place, but we walked through the Greco museum and still walked around trying to find a place to eat. We decided to head back towards the main plaza for food, because every restaurant we looked at was pretty expensive on this side of town. We were heading back to the main plaza, stopping in shops along the way when we realized that Caytlyn was no longer with us. We had a total of 4 hours in the city, which I figured would be plenty of time, but 2 hours had already passed and the kids wanted to shop and go to the military fortress and we still wanted to stop for lunch. Now Caytlyn was lost! We immediately went back to the last shop we remembered seeing her but she wasn’t there. We decided to split up in 2 search parties. My phone and Josh’s phone worked, so he was in one group and I in the other so we could contact each other if we found her. After about 20 minutes of searching, Caytlyn called Josh and told him she was at a photocopy shop using their phone, but they would be closing soon. Josh’s group asked around and went to 4 different photo copy shops but she wasn’t at any of them. My group headed back to the main plaza to meet up with everyone. Josh’s group finally made their way back to the main plaza and Caytlyn was still missing. A bit later she called Josh again from a nearby hotel. It was just a few minutes away from the plaza we were at, so we told her to come to the plaza where we were. About 10 minutes later she finally shows up. While we had been waiting in the plaza, kids had got drinks and snacks at the McDonalds. At this point, we had 30 minutes left until we had to head back to the train station, so we split up and went shopping. Josh bought a dagger and a keychain and I bought some jewelry. We walked back to the train station and headed back to Madrid. We all wished we had another couple of hours in Toledo but it is what it is. The Espinoza’s were already at the house when we got back. We rested for a bit, then went around the corner to the Irish pub for dinner. It was really good and we were all really hungry.