Re: Tres días en Madrid: Day Two Part Two, Parque de Atracci
Gonna quickly get this finished.
The plan was to get up reasonably early then go and see a couple more things in Madrid before heading back to the airport. We were up and out of the hostel by 9:30am, handed the keys over and we made our way to the Metro to get to Opera station to get into Palacio Real for opening. The statue in the nearby gardens didn't have scaffolding around today which was nice.
On the way over to the palace, we met Gaddafi.
Being foolish and naïve we got trapped within the tourist trap and he expected money, Zoe reached for her purse and gave him €2 and I said we were together and we ran off. He probably uttered some spanish along the lines of 'puto Inglés'.
The palace had already attracted quite a queue but we were soon in and paid the (pretty extortionate) €14 entrance fee. We had to dump our bags in a (free) locker which I was actually quite grateful for as mine was quite heavy. We entered the courtyard.
And headed straight for the Royal Armoury...after taking selfies.
No pictures were allowed so you're spared that misery. It was, as you'd expect, a load of guns and armour. It's good up until a point, when you turn the 87th corner and see the 387th breastplate it gets a little old...ok so this one was made in October 1856 rather than July 1856, don't get me wrong, it's good to see but maybe not quite as much.
When you leave you get rewarded with a fab view over west Madrid.
Yay creds
We then headed into the main part of the building and found a rather grand staircase.
I'm obviously kidding, they're dull as dishwater but what was up the top...wasn't.
Then begins a walk around several rooms all with varying splendour. I had a leaflet and would love to give you some information on the rooms but alas, I cannot find it. No pictures were allowed so I'll post a couple from t'internet.
The throne room
The dining room, it is still used today, and the table isn't always set, we say it laid and with the rest of the room, it was stunning
There are plenty more online if you want to look but I loved how each room had it's own little story, why it was decorated the way it was, one room is decorated entirely from porcelain for example. It was fab.
Once done inside we headed back out into the crippling heat and had a look at the smaller courtyard, smaller, but no less impressive.
We looked at a map and realised we'd done pretty much everything so we headed back towards the entrance to collect our bags and move on.
We went back to the Metro (without surprise attacks from Libyan revolutionaries) and made our way across Madrid to the Metro station Banco de España, the nearest station to the Prado Art Gallery. There was some pretty great architecture here.
I was expecting the Prado Museum to be in a building of equal splendour but afraid not.
It was square and modern and meh. Now I've never been to an art gallery, they've just never really appealed to me, but I thought, as this is arguably the biggest and most famous in Madrid we thought we'd give it a go. As you can imagine no photography was allowed. It was alright I suppose. I didn't care too much for the endless corridors of paintings part of the museum (which makes up probably 60% of it) but there are some much nicer exhibit parts with a series of similar paintings, or with sculptures, that's what made it interesting. The only painting I recognised was Las Meninas which I remember doing something in art in school many years ago so it was nice to see that. Problem was I think both Zoe and I were shattered and hot, we tried to enjoy it but it was just too much.
We left and headed over to our final sightseeing destination of the day, Parque del Retiro.
I read somewhere before coming away that it is the largest park in Madrid, the scale of the place was impressive...as was the heat, it reflected off the dusty path and made for a tough experience. Zoe was attracted to shade like a fly to ****.
It was quite funny to watch, bless her. I just put up with it because I wanted to see things
like this,
The oddly bulbous trees cracked me up.
This (wonky) photo is of the Fuente de la Alcachofa, and is made of Sierra de Guadarrama granite and Columnar Stone, it was quite beautiful.
We then arrived at the part I really wanted to see, the boating lake, Estanque with the Monument to Alfonso XII.
If it wasn't so hot I'd have quite liked to have had a go, but watching other boats the guys were doing all the work while the ladies were sat back sunning and fanning themselves, yeah that's fine but I'll be f**ked if I'm doing that. We had pizza instead at a place with awful service, it took 30 minutes to get served and we were on a tight(ish) time budget, eventually it came and it was really nice.
We wanted to find a place that sold paella because we hadn't eaten anything spanish whilst here but we couldn't so had to settle for Italian. When I go back to Italy, then I shall eat paella!
A bird took a liking to us.
On the way out of the park we went past the monument. It was impressive.
It was planned in 1896 after Spain's defeat in Cuba but not built until 1922, that's nice.
After that we needed to get back to the airport, we headed to the Metro station, Retiro and made our way to Madrid T1. A word of warning to anyone planning on going to Madrid, only a Tourist pass will cover you to get back her, otherwise you need to spend €3 to get off...even though it's still in zone 1, so a 10-trip ticket won't cover it. Our flight was annoyingly delayed by 40 minutes.
I have a question, does anyone (maybe Mushroom) have any idea why a RyanAir flight might split the queue so half go into priority and half in the 'other-Q'? Cabin crew marched along the line checking everyone's boarding pass and put half the people in the priority queue, I saw some of their boarding passes, they all said 'other-Q' so why did they get to board the plane first? Not that it bothers me usually but it was clearly a busy flight and I didn't want my baggage to be put in the hold which some people were clearing having done.
Anyway, we boarded the plane and soon we were in the much cooler air of overcast Blighty, I got to meet Zoe's mum and sister for the first time and we said our goodbyes before I had a burdenous series of trains to catch back to Cambridge.
I had such a good three days, we got to see so much in Madrid and I got 13 creds, what more can you ask for?! Zoe was a great travel companion (even with her whining at the oppressive heat ). I can't wait to go somewhere else with her!
Thanks so much for reading guys, I hope you've enjoyed the report as a whole.
