GRUMPY SISTERS' INK

Sorry folks, a bit behind in the blog. Still on Thursday though the date of the post will read differently. After a walk away from Sol and the preparations for the festivities, we found ourselves close to the Museo De Prada. Long queues outside told us this was not for us, so we found the tour bus and climbed in. Always good value to view a city from on high, with a calm voice explaining what you are looking at. Madrid is a sprawling city with a mixture of old and new architecture. The traffic is a bit frantic, but the major roads flow freely. We passed by landmarks that we knew we would visit later, like the Retiro gardens. These gardens were only open to the public relatively recently, as they were originally built for royalty. Retiro is perhaps Madrid's best known park. It occupies 120 hectares of land in the very centre of Madrid. It originated as the gardens of the Palace of the Buen Retiro and was opened to the public by decree of the First Spanish Republic in 1868. The Retiro includes the Rosaleda (a rose garden), the Palacio de Cristal, the Palacio de Velazquez and a boating lake, around which there is always a large variety of shows and street theatre during the weekends. We actually did two bus trips that took us through the commercial area and the old area. More about Thursday later on.