Last day in Madrid

We headed out this morning straight to the Royal Palace to get in line at 9:30 AM for the 10:00 AM opening.

We made it in OK and after security and ticket purchase we were inside looking at this gorgeous palace by about 10:25. Incidentally many of the official places we go to have 1/2 price seniors discounts

The first photo is the grand staircase

At the top of the staircase looking up is this ceiling

We saw numerous items as we worked our way through beautiful rooms.

A few that caught my eye,

The banquet room

Nice seat/couch

The Royal Chapel;

I believe this is called a fortepiano;

The palace had a number of Stradivarius instruments;

A crown:

Photos of the throne room;

More rooms;

I laughed when I thought of Chelada in armour!

It really was spectacular seeing so much of the personal and animal amour; ( the tapestry in the photo below is from 1730)

Next we proceeded to the Royal Armoury; example photos below (i could have included many more)

The final photos were taken at The Royal Collection Galleries. By now we were tired (four hours of walking and looking at things);

They had a lot of things to look at too;

This gallery had a lot of tapestry’s (actually the palace did too). The last part of this gallery was a selection of the clothing and cloth that was available to the Nobles during their time.

Caro and I headed back to the hotel in mid afternoon, first stopping for a tapa and some refreshments at a bar/cafe on the way back.

A couple of hours later it was time for supper. We thought to try the Spanish version of Five Guys burgers but the cost was terrible. A regular bacon cheese burger was the equivalent of $C20.69 and then you paid $C8 for fries…….Pass…..

We found a place selling Argentinian empanadas which were great ( we have had them here in Spain before). 

It was a beautiful night (23 degrees) and we wandered around the area. The big protests are still occurring and the government just called a snap election yesterday or today. We went past the place where people have set up tents and have taken over the plaza (square). Major police presence except today no helicopters overhead all the time.

This photo is just a tiny portion of the total.

Well,Madrid is done for us. We want to move on.