I had been in Madrid for 3 weeks when three of my new friends and I decided it was time to get out and explore Spain a bit. We chose to travel to Toledo for a day trip on the first Saturday in October. Toledo is only a 30ish minute train ride from Madrid, a great place to getaway for a day or two.
We didn’t research the Toledo card enough, and ended up buying the pulsera touristica (tourist bracelet) in town for the day and it ended up being a good number of places to see in one day for our group. The 8 euro bracelets include entrance into 6 popular Toledo sites and are available at tourist booths in the city. You do save money as each place is about 2.5o each.
Check out this website for detailed descriptions of the 6 sites. The videos provide info about the fascinating history and architecture of each building. http://www.toledomonumental.com/pulsera-turistica/
We chose to eat a leisurely lunch and walk and shop a bit around the city with our extra time. However, I’m sure you could also fit the famous Toledo Cathedral and Alcazar fortress into your day trip as well, both well worth seeing. And be sure to catch a late train so that you’re able to see the sun set over the city, one of my favorite parts of the trip.
I’d advise that you check out the Toledo city discount cards available to see if one is the best deal for you. There are ones that even include the train ticket from Madrid! We only saw other price combinations discounts once we got to Toledo, and many of those included guided tours (which we weren’t interested in). So I recommend that you buy a discount card online or in Madrid before you go. http://www.toledocard.com
We booked our train tickets through www.goeuro.com for a reasonable price.
Also, if you’re interested in staying the night in town, check out this hostel. http://juventud.jccm.es/sanservando/en/index.html I haven’t stayed there, but would like to soon. Who wouldn’t want to stay in a converted castle! And it overlooks the city so you can get great sunset and night pictures of the city.
After buying our tourist bracelets at a booth in the city plaza, we followed the marked map route in order across town. Photo post ahead!
-Cristo de la Luz Mezquita-
-Iglesia de los Jesuitas-
-Iglesia del Salvador-
-Iglesia de Santo Tomé- (unfortunately pictures weren’t allowed inside)
-San Juan de los Reyes Monasterio- (my personal favorite place of the day!)
-Santa Maria la Blanca-
~And just a few of my favorite pics from around town~