Mark started the morning off with a walk to see if a Laundromat we had heard about was open. Lots of businesses just close down for a period over summer, so it was all a bit of hit and miss. I hassled him to watch out for all the ladies on the street who might proposition him as a man wandering the streets alone. The Laundromat was indeed open, so he did a load of washing and I caught up with some postcard writing and bag reorganizing.
When he got back, we decided to head into the Retiro Gardens – the main public park of Madrid. It used to be a private park for the Royal family and they opened it up to the public specifically for bullfights. In 1869, they decided it would become fully open to the public and has remained so to this day. It was full of beautiful shady trees and some shady characters lurking close to the subway entrance… so we headed for the trees. It was bloody hot again, back in the mid-high 30s, and so we jumped on every bit of shade we could find. Being a Sunday, the place was packed. There were people snoozing under trees everywhere, seemed to me like a good place to take siesta.
The park has an enormous boating lake in the centre of it, with a monument built in 1901 by Alfonso XII at one end of the lake. Even though the sun was beating down, there must have been at least 30-40 canoes out on the lake. The water was very green, but there were large fish and a lot of turtles popping their heads out of the water. They were all very slow and sluggish, I reckon they were hot too. We wandered around for a while, came across a fabulous garden with topiary trees and then decided that we were just too hot, so we sat under a big tree and took our shoes off to relax for a while.
We left the park through the side opposite where we had entered and walked back into the main part of Madrid. We passed the Puerta de Alcalo archway which was the former gateway into the city, built over nine years by Carlos III in 1769. We saw lots of fountains without water – the Fuente de Cibeles and the Fuente de Neptuno, both built in 1780. We walked past the main post office and other beautifully designed buildings. Many were covered in scaffolding and one was having a huge stage built on the front. We’ve since found out that the Pope is about to visit, so that was the reason for all the construction work. We walked past the Spanish Parliament building, and there were about five or six police officers around the building and on the footpath next to it. There were some big lion sculptures out the front of it, and every time someone walked onto the steps, the police would blow their whistles and make them move on. I settled for a photo from across the street, I didn’t want a policeman blowing a whistle at me.
We found a little tapas bar and wandered in to have some sangria and tapas. Some anchovies in vinegar and onion, and then some sort of Spanish Trail Mix was on offer, and we enjoyed them plentifully and then went back to the motel and siesta'd for a couple of hours.
Dinner time, but because it was Sunday, everything was shut or the places that were open, had limited menu items. We found some fried sardines, and some bread, and settled for that. We went to the chocolateria after that though, just to have a little more to eat. Fruit and veges have been rare with any of the meals we have had, so when we spotted the chocolate fondue with all that (reasonably) fresh fruit, we were in!
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