Day 2: Madrid

After our early start yesterday morning we didn't set the alarm for the crack of dawn today, not heading down to breakfast in the hotel until after 9am. Spain isn't a terribly early-morning country anyway; we were informed when we checked in that breakfast doesn't start until 8am at weekends.

After breakfast, we set off to explore some of the city.

This is the third time we've properly visited Madrid, first coming here in 2014 and then again in 2017. That doesn't include our trip to Segovia in 2019, where our flight home was cancelled by bad weather and we ended up with a bonus day in Madrid airport! Having been here a couple of times before meant that some parts of the city looked very familiar...

...though we did also stumble across some parts that I didn't recognise at all.

From our hotel it was an easy walk towards the centre of town.

We visited a couple of the main squares. Firstly, Plaza Mayor...

...and then Puerta del Sol.

The latter was very busy, including with people in costumes hoping to collect money from tourists. In the photo below, you should be able to spot a Transformer and a Mario!

This square also features a statue of a bear with a tree, which is the symbol on the coat of arms of Madrid.

From Puerta del Sol we followed a road which took us past Madrid's old town hall.

There was a beautiful display of flowers in front of it - and overall we have seen a lot of flowers in Madrid today, considering it's nearly the end of October!

From there it wasn't far to Madrid's cathedral.

It's a very impressive building...

...though I do feel that this photo was slightly ruined by a man dressed as a giant bear. There was also a giant gorilla, but I didn't get him in shot  

The cathedral is right opposite the royal palace.

We didn't pay to go inside, but Tim did get a good photo through the railings

The cathedral and the palace are in a higher part of Madrid and there's a viewing platform from where you can look out across the city. In one direction it looks very green, because there are several parks...

...while in the other direction it's much more built up.

We walked along the side of the palace...

...and into some pretty gardens.

Again, there were plenty of flowers...

...as well as some statues and fountains.

From here it was a short walk to one of Madrid's more unusual tourist attractions: the Temple of Debod.

This ancient temple was donated to Spain by Egypt in 1968, as thanks for helping they had provided relocating other ancient monuments during the construction of the Aswan Dam.

From here we decided to walk downhill, towards some of the parks.

We found ourselves in the Campo del Moro, a park which sits just behind and below the royal palace.

A group of tourists asked Tim to take a photo of them, and in return they took one of us

It was a really beautiful location and we'd been walking for quite a while at this point, so we sat down for a drink with a view of the palace. We were slightly surprised when a peacock casually walked past us!

Afterwards, we explored the park.

There were some lovely autumn colours.

We really enjoyed walking around and, having entered the park at the bottom end, were hoping to exit it somewhere near the top by the palace.

We ended up failing to locate a way out, because lots of paths turned out to be unexpectedly roped off. It looked like perhaps they were concerned about trees falling down if there was bad weather. So in the end, we climbed back down and exited the way we had come.

Then we walked to a cafe in the centre of town, where we were meeting with an Esperanto friend for lunch.

The cafe was running one of the 'menu of the day' deals which are popular in Spain, where you can get a set menu on weekday lunches for what often feels like a ridiculously low price. I forgot to take pictures of most of the food, but I had a first course of tagliatelle carbonara, a second course of pork with crispy potatoes, a glass of wine and a chocolaet pudding that was too big to finish... all for under €18.

Once we'd finished eating it was around 15.30. We'd already collected 18k steps before lunch, so we set off back to the hotel for a bit of a rest and to write the blog. Now all we need to do is work up an appetite for dinner!