From Madrid to Toledo and On to Córdoba: McLean Hudson

On July 1, we left our beloved Hotel Señorial and Madrid behind as we traveled on our way to our second city, Córdoba. On the way, we stopped in historic Toledo, which turned out to be absolutely gorgeous. The twisting, winding streets of the area of Toledo where we were provided some beautiful photo ops. The city had tarps strung across the street high in the air to provide shade.

We visited perhaps the biggest cathedral I have ever seen (above), and I can hardly believe some of the stones used to build it were transported through the narrow streets of this city. Almost entirely on our own in Toledo, a few of my friends and I took time after the cathedral to sample local restaurants. We even managed to find our first stale churros in Spain (not the last stale ones we came across).
After four hours in Toledo, we hopped on the bus and headed to Córdoba, where we would spend eleven days. We checked into our maze of a hotel around 8PM and unpacked before heading out to explore the city. It took us all of five minutes to get lost, but it was about fifteen minutes before we realized that. The city seemed very quiet and boring at the time, but we later learned that that was because we had wandered into a residential area. Too tired to worry about our stay in Córdoba, we slowly made our way back to Hotel Maestre by way of asking drunk people where to go. It was probably not the most efficient method of navigating, but I doubt there are more fun ways to do it.