The rain in Spain falls mainly in ....Madrid

Toledo
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Arrived in Madrid by train. We had initially booked a hotel here but decided to change to an apartment so that we could eat in and catch up on some washing. Booking on the internet does have it's drawbacks and the apartment has not lived up to it's photos. Cleaniness decidely lacking. Anyway makes us get out and about. First day the rains came and temperature went from 30 to 16 a shock to the system.Purchased a couple of umbrellas that went up in price as it rained more. Decided that we would get some indoor culture and visited the world famous Prado museum. Viewed paintings from the likes of El Greco, Rubens, Rembraandt, Goya and VanDyk. After viewing about 500 paintings we decided that we had our decade of cultural needs. Karen managed to find some more shops and purchased two pairs of shoes that enhanced her mission to purchase  shoes in every country that we have ever visited. Purchased some goodies from the local store for dinner at home, which was challenging given our lack of Spanish. Anyway ended up with a nice chicken meal with the obligatory bottle of local vino. Next day found a nice square (Plaza Mayor) which in a lot of ways resembled St Marks square in Venice. Sitting at an outdoor table for a couple of hours eating and drinking and watching the world go by is good fun. Getting around Madrid is not easy, the streets lead off in all directions and wherever you go the sidewalk is crowded with people. Spain does not seem popular with Aussies, we have seen or heard very few and even Yanks and Poms are in small numbers. Day three went off to a place called Toledo about 30 mins by train from Madrid. Unfortunately our trip coincided with the cycling Tour Of Spain in Toledo that day so we had to wait 3 hours to get a train so we went to the Retiro park in the middle of Madrid so it worked out OK. The old city of Toledo  sits high on the hill overlooking the new town. It is a spectacular place very much like other hill top towns in Italy. History dates back to the 12th century with their brilliant cathedral commencin  1226. We spent the best part of the day trecking around the cobbled streets  and got back to Madrid at 6-00pm absolutely exhausted. Out to dinner last night and stumbled on a great place with great food and reasonably cheap wine. Today we are bumming around waiting to catch our flight to Athens this evening. Went to a huge flea market this morning along with half a million other people. Overall Spain has been a great experience. History is overwhelming when you consider how limited ours is.  Travelling in Spain is more difficult than other European countries that we have visited mainly because of the language difficulties. However if you are patient and understanding of local cultures you get by without too many traumas. Our travel guide book warned about the levels of crime and pickpocketing but we have not experienced any problems, although we have taken measure to ensure we do not encourage the crims.