Blog Zero: Edinburgh to Toledo
Blog Zeroes for the previous three trips have specialised in recounting a series of travails, medical, dental, and other, in the lead-up to our leaving Edinburgh for our first port of call.
The 2023 Retirement Trip Number Four version, however, really takes the biscuit. Four hospital admissions for me over the summer have meant that the build-up to our trip has been less than ideal. Indeed, the scheduled first two and a half weeks – The Azores and mainland Portugal – unfortunately had to be postponed until another day.
My latest, and hopefully last, operation was exactly 4 weeks before our flight to Madrid, to pick up the Spanish section of our itinerary, so I’m not quite back to full strength yet and we’ll try to pace ourselves accordingly.
Ryanair from Edinburgh to Madrid Barajas is smooth and hassle-free. We then decide that a bus between the airport and Atocha train station would be the best option. Unfortunately, said bus is jam-packed and it looks like we’ll have to stand for the whole journey; in the event seats become available about half way through.
A trek through the obscurely signposted station leads us down to the lower level and our train for the 35-minute journey to Toledo, where we alight in the beautifully historic and ornate station. Some trouble with our Starling cards delays us getting a taxi, which takes as close to our apartment in the old town as we can get. A short hike up steep cobbled streets brings us to our lovely apartment – an original old town house the interior of which has been re-imagined beautifully in Moorish style.
As with Trip Number Three in 2022, a four-stage journey has brought us to our first destination, the regal world heritage city of Toledo!
