Madrid 2023 – Day Three – Changing of the Guard

Having spent yesterday looking at the architecture of Madrid, today was spent in its parks.

Before we could step out of the hotel though we had to prepare ourselves for the “Severe Weather” that was being predicted by our weather app. This included the slightly worrying “Possible threat to life or property”. Turned out that the severe weather that they were concerned with was the temperatures dropping to -4. I guess that they aren’t used to the temperature dropping below zero in these parts and so don’t have the infrastructure setup to do things such as grit the roads. We went out without too much worry.

Parque Del Duen Retiro

The Parque Del Duen Retiro is just a five minute walk from the hotel and is a large open space that seemed to be well used by locals and tourists alike. This was probably helped by the fact the park is very close to the big museums here in Madrid and the Prado in particular.

We followed a route suggested by a city walking app that I have and that took us to all the major points within the park, although THE major attraction was obviously the trees and open spaces themselves.

There are two buildings of interest in the park. The first is the Crystal Palace modeled on the one built in England. This was empty inside but had some interesting, large scale, mirrors that you could use to inspect the glass roof structure above you. The second was an outpost of the Renia Sofia museum which was showing an exhibition of the work of Manolo Quejido (no, I’d not heard of him either). These were contemporary, paintings and were pretty good.

They’re Changing Guard at… Palacio de Buenavista

Once done in the park we decided to walk to the Mercado for some lunch and an opportunity to try something different on offer. We’d not long left the park when we saw an area barricaded off with people pressed against them. Being as nosey as ever we went to have a look to see what was going on. It turned out to be a changing of the guard at the Palacio de Buenavista. A bit of online research turned up that this only takes place the last Friday of each month so it was very much being in the right place at the right time.

Real Jardín Botánico

After a break for lunch, we went to the Real Jardín Botánico (botanical gardens). We always like a good botanical garden and look out for them wherever we go and have visited numerous over the years. Entrance was €6 per person which included another interesting art exhibition, this time by the Chilean artist Felipe Lavin. Less interesting were the gardens themselves, unfortunately. They were beautifully laid out but sadly at this time of year, all the beds were bare. There ought to be a reduced entrance during periods like this!

Tomorrow’s our last day and we are going to hit the museums.