The Tourist Side of Toledo

Okay, so the last post about Toledo was basically a large, illustrated rant about medieval architecture in Spain, which was pretty, awesome, and pretty awesome (the architecture, not the rant).  However, not everyone is a history nerd, so I figured I'd do a post on Toledo from a more touristical (shut up, Spell Check) perspective.  I'll try to go easy on the pictures of beautiful old buildings...

...sorry, I couldn't help myself.

Anyway, Toledo, as a city, has been placed in a peculiarly pernicious predicament.  It's primarily a historic city, so its main industry is tourism.  However, it's so close to Madrid that most people who tour Spain book their rooms in Madrid and only visit Toledo during the day (which, incidentally, is exactly what we did).  This means that Toledo has a lot of empty hotel rooms come nightfall, which is a bit of a downer for the tourist industry.  So, if you're travelling Spain, have some pity on poor Toledo and spend the night there.  Also, it's generally a bit cheaper to stay in Toledo anyhow, so there you have it.

One of the first things that will stick out if you visit Toledo is that there are a lot of swords (hopefully they won't be sticking out of you).  It's a bit hard to see in this picture because the sun is reflecting off the display window, but this should give you a decent idea.  Also, imagine that every third store or so has a display window like this one:

I have a feeling you'd be quite happy here, Josh Gregory.

Apparently, Toledo is famous for its steel and has been since the Middle Ages.  In fact, they made some of the models for the Lord of the Rings swords here.  And of course, you can get a replica of just about any Lord of the Rings weapon that you want (have fun getting it through customs, though :^).  One of the shop windows even had a life-sized version of that huge helmet the Witch-King of Angmar wears, which would make for an absolutely killer Halloween costume.

Another building that stuck out to me personally was this cafeteria:

Sí, es un búho.

About this picture, I only have one thing to say: "El Búho siempre está mirándote."