We sure do love May... 2 bank holidays!!!! Making the most of our time, we headed to Madrid for a long and relaxing weekend. Jeff works with 2 people from Madrid so we were armed to take on the city with plenty of recommendations.
We got in late the first night, so headed out early the next morning for a walking tour to help get our bearings down. We started out in Porta del Sol
As the picture says, it is the middle of Spain and KM.0
(Turns out KM.0 is actually not here... but close enough for us!)
She took us to some of the big sites that we knew
we wanted to go back to late on in our stay
Our guide recommended the 'sherry' like shots in edible chocolate glasses. Different from anything we have ever tried, but tasty all the same!
After the tour, we decided to seek out La Latina area and try our own little tapas and vino tour.
We had a grand old time and left the evening with a new hat.
I was able to drive a hard bargain with the hat man and it made my night!
After a bit of a lie in the next day, we ventured out and saw some of the sights from the day before and a few new ones!
The impressive gateway to the city
It was too beautiful not to go outside and enjoy the sun in Madrid's former royal park
The lake was full of boaters... given the queue we decided to head back later
(aka when it was not Saturday afternoon)
There is an Egyptian temple in Madrid that has amazing views and cool exhibit to wonder
And of course found some interesting and fun poses to capture the moments!
We had heard good things about Toledo... so we ventured to the train station the next morning to head that way! Toledo was once the capital of Spain and is declared a Unesco world heritage site.
On the way to Toledo... we stumbled across the turtle 'farm' inside the train station.
So cool!
Toledo is surrounding by rivers and set up on a hill
We took the bus from the train station and saw some of the best views around
I can't get enough of the black and white - love these pictures!!!!
We saw some of our first wild poppies in the field! Jeffrey was playing with the focal points and took some great pictures!
Later that evening, we went on a tapas food! Great evening meeting and eating lots of different types of food. It is pretty cool getting to meet people from all walks of life and their perspective on things. Here are a few of the food highlights:
- amazing, hot and fresh spanish omelette
- how to pick out delicious iberian jamon
- interesting Octopus
With another beautiful day the following day, we headed to the Botanical Gardens
Soooo many beautiful flowers... we ended up wondering for 2-3 hours!
After a bit of wondering, we decided to head back
to Retiro Park to have a go at the paddle boats
We really enjoyed the time out on the water!!!
After paddling our hearts out, we wondered past the
Crystal Palace before heading back for dinner
To top off the trip, on the last day, we did an audio tour through the Royal Palace. It was inspired by Versailles and has over 3000 rooms! Each room was visited was pretty unique and had very different themes. We are headed to Versailles in June and looking forward to seeing how they compare!
Madrid is awesome and we can definitely see why it is considered to be Europe's sunniest capital! The tapa, wine, churros and SUN are definitely the visit!
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