Last week Hilary dragged me off to Toledo to go round art galleries. I thought Toledo was most famous for its steel - swords and knives - but it seems its greatness is due to El Greco having lived there. I have now seen nearly everything that he ever painted and many that he didn't. He painted almost nothing but religious pictures so I have seen enough Immaculate Conceptions, Adorations of the baby, Crucifixions, Resurrections, and Assumptions of Mary to last a good-sized family three or four lifetimes. We even went to Madrid to see the Prado for more El Greco and also Velazquez for his paintings of kings, queens, princes and princesses - all of them Habsburgs and thus all of them identical. But I managed to restore some balance by taking Hilary around the Goya rooms. We had a nice little hotel between the cathedral and the alcazar (photos from the hotel roof terrace). The main thing I learned was that Toledo is not pronounced the way I have doing it all my life - i.e "toe-lay-doh"; the people there call it "toe-lee-doh".
