We took a day trip from our stay in Madrid to Toledo. It's a walled and generally very medieval town about an hour or so outside of Madrid. It's very beautiful and worth a trip if you're nearby, though I would strongly recommend if you only have time for one day trip that you go to Avila instead. Toledo is very pretty, but Avila is, for some reason, much less touristy and you have a freer go of the place. It's only an hour and a half from Madrid and the train ride there is lovely. It's also walled and has a winding medieval core.
The reason I'm writing about Toledo is this phenomenal Tapas bar we visited. Not a stone's throw from the Cathedral it was quiet and as far as I could tell had only locals. We spent the bulk of our 3 hours in Toledo in this bar. I'll have to look up the name and post it. We ate most of our meals at Tapas bars in our week's time in Spain and this was the one that we'd been looking for. It was the "classic" experience that I hadn't had before but had always wanted. We stood at the bar and had a few rounds of beers. With each round the bartender would give us a tapa (this is typical, any decent tapa bar does this). And in between we would ask to try the different tapa that were displayed in a case in front of us. Each of them were delicious. Meanwhile we got to chatting with the bartender and his mom (they ran the bar together), at least Alissa did and translated for us. We got to try some really great and original dishes. The beer was perfect for a hot summer day. And at the end we had this excellent Spanish coffee liquer. I wish I could tell you the name, but we got it wrong and when we bought a bottle we wound up with a funky licorice liquer. It was my dream tapas experience.
I think my reason for telling this story is this: stop in to every little out of the way place that you pass by and try a little something. If you're lucky and it's good you could have the gustatory experience you've been pining for.
The name of the bar, by the way: Casa Antonio.
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