Today I planned to visit the Palacio Real de Madrid. I wasn't sure what time it opened but I figured it would be later than I wanted. The night before I had been talked out of taking a walking tour of the city then having a tour of the palace after the walking by the guy at the hotel desk. He said most guests don't find it that good and it is cheaper to do it on your own or to even take the hop on hop off bus of Madrid to get the tour stuff. After I got cleaned up I just headed on down towards where the palace should be. I knew I needed to take a left when I reached the Plaza de Espana but I wasn't totally sure how long it would take to get there. I reached the Plaza de Espana with it still being too dark to take any good pictures of the couple monuments there so I kept on past it and down the hill further. I eventually came to the Jardines de Sabatini which is on one side of the palace. I knew it was still early so I walked through them a bit. They were more in the Italian style as a landscape garden rather than a flower garden type. After that I walked up and around to the side of the palace where I found another park that was completely covered in litter. I suspect it was too early for the city cleaners to have gotten out to have picked up after the messy punk kids and thoughtless tourists. However it go there there was a ton of trash. From there I walked on through to the entrance of the palace to find out that it opened at 10am. It was still before 9am by a good deal at this point. So I basically wandered around for the time to kill. I entered the cathedral and took a couple quick snapshots but they were about to have a service and there were a bunch of nuns there as well as a camera crew that was going to shoot something happening there. From there I found the ruins of a Roman crypt being excavated. After that I wandered around without purpose to kill the time. About 20 minutes before 10 I decided to just get near the entrance and wait. People started to line up so I did as well. When the doors opened I bought the ticket, had to screen security and headed to the royal apartments first. I really must have moved quick. I think the few people ahead of me must have stopped right away in the gift/book shop. I managed to get more than half way through the apartments being the only non-security person I saw. Finally folks moving through at a quicker clip did catch up to me but I was happy to be in a royal palace and mostly uninterrupted for as long as I was. Unfortunately they had a no pictures indoors policy so I had to buy the book for that. They were fairly nice estate rooms most of which had been set up the way they are in the 18th century with some done in the 20th century. In any event I quite enjoyed the royal apartments and moved through them at a reasonably slow pace to look at everything. From there I moved on to the temporary exhibit of their clocks collection. I had noticed that some of the clock pieces referenced were missing and this turned out to be why. Apparently some of the former Spanish royalty had a huge interest in clocks so they collected a lot, especially from England and France. It was a cool exhibit which might have been nicer if the clocks that had animations were displaying them. There was a movie that did so though. After the clock exhibit I went to the royal pharmacy followed by the royal armory. The armory was mainly a collection of armor owned and possibly worn by the Spanish kings. It was nice but of course it was small, or smaller than many other collections I've seen. It took more than a couple hours to get through everything.
After the palace I headed up Calle Mayor and found the Plaza Mayor. I ended up eating a quick lunch at the McDonald's there mainly because I couldn't see any lunch places that had seats otherwise. There were a lot of people just sitting and drinking coffee at a lot of the cafes around. In any event I had the McNuggets meal with a coke and was out the door quick. After the plaza I headed up toward the Parque de Madrid and wandered around that. They had a largish boat pond and a couple other things but mainly it was a park that was just filled with people. I got a beer at a stand and watched the boat pond for a while then headed on to see the Palacio de Velazquez which turned out to be nothing but a museum with an exhibition for some awful looking paintings from some artist I haven't heard of. I of course am not good with art and maybe, probably, others think it looks good. In any event, I didn't go in. After that I found the Palacio de Cristal but that was closed for renovations it appeared. There was a lot of heavy machinery inside it anyway. There was a smaller pond outside it though and that had a fountain and a fake waterfall. It also had water fowl of various sorts and a bunch of turtles too which was unexpected. After that I just wandered the perimeter of the park and eventually because I couldn't find public toilets and it was getting urgent I headed in to the hotel, perhaps a bit earlier than I had intended. The weather remained beautiful all day though. I had basically done a giant loop around the older part of the city so far as I can tell. It really wasn't difficult to figure out at all. Since it was early I chose basically to make it just a pit stop and drop off the stuff I had bought to lighten the load. From there I headed back out to see the Plaza de Espana in better light.
The crowds were already beginning to pick up but I did a quick run down to the Plaza and took a few pictures then headed on to Calle Mayor again. On the way I found a place for helados and had a dulce de leche ice cream which was good. From the plaza I worked my way back towards the hotel and then spent a couple hours watching another Japanese movie called Tajomaru which wasn't quite as interesting as Machine Girl though it was about samurai. After the movie I headed downstairs, booked a tour for El Escorial and then headed back to the Plaza Mayor (or perhaps the Plaza Santa Cruz depending on how bad I read maps) and found dinner sitting outside at a restaurant called Helgar. I had a set menu which started by my choice with a fish and seafood soup that was tasty but most of the fish in it (especially the shellfish) was extremely chewy. The main course was a grilled Dorada which is a whitefish around here I guess. It was very good and fresh but there were a couple spots that weren't properly cooked. Being a sushi eater it wasn't a big issue for me but I should bring it up. I had two large Cruzcampo beers (it was my birthday after all) and finished with an espresso included in the menu. All in all it was a decent meal. Not bad for a totally tourist place anyway. Maybe a touch more expensive than it need to be. The beers were really too expensive comparatively to what I have been paying. The price of finding a tourist place which is more understandable. From there I headed back into the hotel and crashed for the evening.
The pictures for day 7 are here.
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