Spain, Day Thirty-Five

We finally decided to have a touristy day today for the first time since my parents arrived. Our first stop on our list was to check out the royal palace of Spain. This was truly a beautiful place. It's actually fairly new. It was burned down in the late 18th century so, this place isn't quite as old as some other royal headquarters that we have seen across Europe. There were so many elegant rooms to walk through though with exquisite artwork and beautiful ceiling frescos, which my mom thought were very fresh, indeed.

The entrance to the palace from the courtyard.

The main staircase

Mom and me in the park area in front of the palace

After about an hour and a half of touring, we headed onto our next stop, which was actually in one of the subway stops. Madrid had a seemingly cool museum all about its ancient walls, that is in the underground Opera metro location. Seeing as this was the metro stop we were already taking home, we decided it might be a neat place to check out. Well it turns out it was all in Spanish, so my parents didn't get much out of it except maybe the word for wall, which is pared by the way (shouts out to your palabra del dia). We were actually thinking it would be a pretty big museum but it only had two of the really old walls on display and then a projector with a kid's film playing on a loop, again only in Spanish. So not the most educational of visits for us English-speakers but it was still interesting to see nonetheless.

One of the ancient walls of Madrid

Another ancient wall

We finished our touring a lot earlier than expected (something my dad was rather joyous about) so we headed back to the flat to finish packing our suitcases and eat some of the leftovers we had for lunch to clean out our fridge. I managed a pretty solid siesta, logging about three hours of sleep on the couch–whoops!

For our evening plans, we decided we would hit up one last shopping area: Calle Fuencarral. This is actually a really great shopping street and we are kicking ourselves for not checking out the area earlier. Pretty much every store you could ever imagine was on this street, including about six different Zara stores. We decided not to shop since we didn't want to bring our bags with us to dinner, but for any future Madrid travelers, go here first for shopping! We ended up on Gran Via which led us to the Circulo de Bellas Artes, which was a roof-top bar where we enjoyed a few drinks and a lovely view before dinner.

Our view of the city

We landed on an Italian restaurant for our last dinner in Madrid, ordering some chorizo and mushroom pizza for my mom and I to split and a steaming plate of lasagna for my dad. It was a great meal and a wonderful way to top of our adventures in Madrid. It felt weird thinking that it was my last night in Madrid. I am so grateful for the experiences I had here but I am very excited to move on and see what Barcelona has in store for me next week.