Madrid

The adventures continue, this time we are off to Spain.  We are staying  2 nights in Madrid, then we will make our way to Valencia and the coast. I wanted to do another tour of the coast here in Spain as we did in Peru but just cant give up the opportunity to visit Madrid. 

We are staying at one of the more pricey hotels ,but I am thinking of it more as a main attraction, since we will spend our first two nights here we decided to splurge and I think it was well worth the money.  We spent the first part of our day exploring the hotel! We got to go up to the roof and take pictures, the architecture is awesome.

Eating lunch in the restaurant was a real treat, service was wonderful, and the food was great.The coffee was excellent but be sure to order a "doble" if you want an American sized portion.

  

   We walked down one of the most famous avenues in Madrid the La Gran, again I was amazed at the wonderful architecture and the street was full all kinds of shops .

of course I am always impressed by the churches in this part of the country as they take religion very seriously, first we saw the Church of the Holy Cross, it was soooo tall, and I love the brick work.

Then we got to tour the San Jeronimo el Real Church, I think this was my favorite. I love the cross' everywhere              

    This is another one I really liked,  the Church of Saint Francis the Great.  It was styled after the domes of the Roman Pantheon. 

We also visited The Royal palace , which has its own royal Chapel. 

The sculptures and paintings inside were breath taking.

Even the grounds around the palace had cool attractions, this is the  Fuente de las Conchas, the Fountain of the shells

we were so distracted by everything all of a sudden it was dark !

We didn’t get to the museum so We will have to spend an extra day here to check it out tomorrow. But I'm exhausted so its bed time. But not without a local bottle of the good stuff!

I went to la Fisna which is renowned for its wines. But which one??? oh well maybe a few!

So after a groggy start to the day we made it to the

Prado Museum

  

This was one of the best parts of the trip so far.... the art is so old and so nice.

Well we eventually made our way out of town ( after lunch of course….)

 

Good Bye Madrid!!

Hello Valencia…..

The Plaza de Ayuntamiento by our Hotel. There is so much to do we are going to have another long night...

This is the Falla Plaza del Ayuntamiento … for a minute I thought I was in Disney World!!!

See you all in the morning……...Late morning!!!