Friday
of Cheryl's visit was a somewhat cold and rainy one. But we had already
made plans to be on the Madrid City Tour Bus, so that's what we did. We
brought our umbrellas and just planned to be a little wet and cold all day.
Sorry
for the blurry picture, but it’s the only one we got that showed what the bus
looked like. So that’s why I’m posting
it. :D
Once
we got on the bus we got headphones.
They had a recording that played as we drove around the city. They had it in 16 different languages,
including one for ages 7-15. I was going
to listen to that to see what the difference was, but I forgot.
It was nice being able to listen to
explanations in English, but sometimes it was hard to tell which building it
was actually referring to. I think a
live person would’ve been better at that.
But it still gave us good information about Madrid.
We
sat on the top of the bus, even though it only had a stiff tarp between us and
the rain and cold and wind. I think it
would’ve been much more enjoyable had the weather been nice. But we kept on going and enjoyed it anyway.
Here
are some pictures we took from the bus of the city.
The
Madrid City Tour Bus had two different routes through the city. It was designed as a hop on-hop off deal, so
we could get on at any of the stops and get off any where too. After riding it around for awhile, we got off
at the Palacio Real, the Royal Palace.
Cheryl and I got in line while Paul and Glenn went looking for a
bathroom and somewhere to get some lunch.
I thought they’d be back within a few minutes, but Cheryl and I kept
moving closer and closer to the entrance.
When we were about 5 minutes away I was really starting to worry. I didn’t want to enter without them—plus Paul
had all of the money anyway so I would’ve have been able to pay. But I didn’t want to be separated from him
again. Then 2 minutes before we got in,
we saw Paul running up, with Glenn bouncing on his shoulders having a great
time. What an ordeal they had had! They couldn’t find a place with an open
public restroom—that is one of the hard things about Europe! And they couldn’t find a restaurant that did
take-out. So he had to go find a grocery
store so he could buy little pastry sandwiches, some drinks and a few other
things. So just before we headed in, we
gobbled down a banana.
I
went back to my journal entry to see what I wrote about the palace on the day
we actually went there.
“The tour of the palace
was set up kind of strange at first. It
didn’t seem like it had a suggested route, but then it did. It wasn’t as impressive as Versailles, but it
was okay. There were some beautiful
rooms in there. I did get thinking
though about how much it cost to build all of it and to maintain it and to have
all of that in there. And then to think
about all the hundreds and thousands of other people who these monarchs ruled
over—how they had almost nothing. And
it’s just worldly wealth. All the kings
and queens who lived there have died—and couldn’t take any of it with
them. They just had all of that for
show. How much did it enrich their
lives? And how much does it enrich my life
to see it? I don’t know.”
I know that may seem harsh, but it’s what I felt. There are things to be learned from seeing
places like this, but I’ve learned that the most important things in life are
not things, but people and relationships.
Inside the palace we couldn’t take pictures, but we could in the
courtyard.
Here’s one of the cathedral across the courtyard and outside the palace
gates.
Here’s a couple of Glenn standing guard.
We did take a couple in the hallways of the palace. We didn’t realize that was not allowed
either. But I wanted to get one of Paul
and Cheryl with their cousin. :D Paul’s
dad told us that Queen Isabella the Catholic was their second cousin 16
generations removed. They have a set of
great grandparents in common, but descended from different children. Pretty interesting, eh?
After the tour we went upstairs in the gift shop to their café and ate
the rest of our lunch. They had a
picture of the dining room from the palace in there, so Cheryl took a picture
of it.
Then when we were all done there, we walked over to the Egyptian Temple,
the Templo de Debod. We had been to the
outside previously, but hadn’t gone inside.
We were excited to do so.
We
waited in line 20-30 minutes and then got to go in and look around. I was glad that we got to take pictures!
Ancient Egypt has always fascinated me.
I would love to go there someday and see the pyramids, the Valley of the
Kings and other incredible things there.
But it was pretty neat to see a little bit of ancient Egypt right here
in Madrid.
After the Egyptian Temple, we got back on the bus and went to the Plaza
Mayor and then Plaza de Puerta del Sol.
Glenn loves Plaza Mayor—that’s where the guys who make the big bubbles
are. We let Glenn chase the bubbles for
a long time this time and he had fun. He
got another balloon sword because the lady selling them comes up to the kids
and hands it to them and then comes to find the parents to make us pay
her. What a dirty trick! Well she had done this when we first got
there, but we told her no and Glenn didn’t take the balloon. But then she came over to where all the kids
were playing with the bubbles and started handing them out to the kids. Glenn took one that time and she didn’t make
us pay. I didn’t feel bad because she
was being tricky. So he had fun using
the balloon to pop the bubbles.
Then we walked over to Puerta del Sol.
This plaza has some interesting things…
The one that made us laugh was
the one of the man dressed like Jesus.
It was Santa Semana, or Holy Week after all. We ended in Puerta del Sol because we had
read about a procession taking place in the streets and going by the
plaza. We weren’t sure if it would
happen or not because of the weather.
After waiting 15 minutes or so past the time that it was supposed to
start, we left to go home because it didn’t look like it was going to
happen. Paul had asked at the tourism
office if they knew whether or not it would be canceled and she guessed that it
would be. But Cheryl did get a picture
of some who were planning to be in the procession.
So we hopped on to one of the buses and headed home. We had thought about going out to eat, but
once we got home we realized that we didn’t want to go out again that
night. So I just made us spaghetti and
we had fruit and a few other things.
Cheryl took a couple pictures of the boys—seems we wiped poor Paul
out. We all were pretty tired.
Oh, and one more picture. We had
taken this at the beginning of the day.
Glenn had wanted to match Cheryl’s clothes…so we had to take a picture of
them together, in their matching clothes! :D
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