Don’t worry folks, our Madrid journey is almost over. There’s plenty more Spain to come, and we are nowhere close to the end of our whole trip, but Madrid is drawing to a close. We had spent our previous Madrid days wandering around art museums and the like, but now it was finally time to get a taste of the good life. The Royal life. And so our final full day in Madrid began with a lovely walk in the park. Coffee and donuts in hand (you can take the American out of America…) we proceeded to El Retiro. This was really nice, as it should be, since it was originally owned by the monarchy. The day was a bit gloomy but that hadn’t stopped a number of Madrileños from showing up to take walks and play football and do you know your normal park things. We wandered the paths ourselves, seeing that statue of the devil and the big lake thing and of course since this was a royal park we had to stop by and see the palace, namely the Crystal Palace. We couldn’t stay forever however (unlike the oldest tree in the park, which we also saw), we had places to be!

The first of those places to be was El Rastro flea market, which is a Sunday market thing which spans a number of streets. It was very crowded and I was a little nervous because the guide books all warned the place was rife with pick pockets, but we managed to avoid being pickpocketed. Instead all we met were extremely helpful and friendly people selling all sorts of fun trinkets and antiques and the like. We got a Christmas ornament and I regret not getting a cute little brass sheep that looked like the cute little brass things I see in the old houses we visit, but them’s the breaks. It was fun to see this side of the city and worth a stop if you’re in town at the right time.

But the real place we had to be (because we had timed tickets) was the Royal Palace! Man what a place (relatively new too, for Europe! dates from “only” the mid-18th century). We had gotten a guided tour and barely made it in time because we couldn’t quite figure out the door but we did make it and off we went. They only let you take pictures in the first couple of rooms, so I don’t have many pictures for you, and believe me this is just a little itty bitty taste:

It was overwhelming. At some point you stop processing the splendor because it just keeps going. According to our tour guide the palace has 3400 rooms (twice as many as Versailles, they say), and I think the tour includes like 15-20 of them. Still a lot! Despite the lack of pictures, I tried to take notes. First thing is the clocks! They like clocks. The palace has 700 of them apparently, all of them working, the tour guide was proud to point out. I spotted at one point a clock endtable, like the entirety of the table surface was a giant clockface (behind glass). Maybe it was a tea table and you could therefore make teatime jokes, or something. More stats: we saw a banquet table that could seat 144 people; apparently the Spanish use the French protocol (the Bourbons are Hapsburgs, or something, I don’t know, who put them in charge anyway). This means that the King and Queen sit in the middle, unlike the English protocol, where they sit at the ends. I’ll try to remember that if I’m ever putting together a seating arrangement for them.

The single most impressive room I thought was the “dressing room,” which was done up in “Chinese style,” which didn’t really look all that Chinese but the place was decked out floor to ceiling in ornate embroidery and decorations everywhere and so much gold. The whole palace was gold, gold, gold. Walking out of the throne room I even spotted a gilded thermostat. It looked good, I gotta get me one of those. One room wasn’t covered in gold and was instead covered in porcelain, like instead of wallpaper (or embroidery) they had porcelain wall panels. To decorate the space they had porcelain statues. All the rage at the time. This was the “toilet room,” which is funny. Another room (they all blurred together, might have been the Chinese room again) there was a gigantic chandelier, which of course there were many in the palace, but this one had this extra hanging layer thing with lions on it. I don’t know man at least they funded artisans, you know?

By the time we got to the chapel I had stopped taking notes because I just stopped processing it all. We saw the crown jewels, which included a large crown, too big to wear because it isn’t worn because, as our tour guide told us, Spanish kings are proclaimed and not crowned and this is somehow an important distinction. An impressive note (among many) about the palace is that since I guess the Spanish monarchy was never overthrown they had a lot of original stuff, such as a golden fleece necklace decoration thingy included in the crown jewels that dates from 1431. Other originals included a whole quintet of Stradivarius instruments, which I think is five more than I’ve ever see before.

Bleary-eyed from staring at so much opulence, we stumbled back out into the courtyard. I could barely process the experience. To give us more time, we decided to see something more down-to-earth: the armory. The palace also has a display of a bunch of old weapons that have been used by Spanish armies dating back to like way back when, and I am amused and impressed by the thought that at some point this was new stuff, and then eventually wound up in storage because it was old, and then presumably someone dug it all out of a closet for inventory purposes or something and they just decided to make a museum out of it. There was a lot of stuff! Lots of medieval stuff (maybe early modern). There was a suit of armor that had like a big skirt (I am sure it has a more impressive and less dainty technical name) with dog motifs on it, which was so weird that I didn’t notice until my super amazing wife pointed out that next to the dog skirt armor was actual armor for a dog next to it. The poor pupper, that must have been uncomfortable. Besides matching your dog I also noticed further on that it was important to make sure your parade armor matched your horse’s parade armor (I guess the other way around) which is cute. Especially interesting was Japanese armor apparently made in 1580, which seemed out of place. Based on the armory’s webpage I am guessing it is the armor sent to Philip II in his capacity as King of Portugal? Pretty neat anyway. But with all the armor looked at we finally departed the palace, disappointed that the gift shop was already closed.

(Finally, as an aside, I wrote down in my journal that I should mention my own experience with the Spanish crown: back at the Naval Academy I of course used to be on the Offshore Sailing team (as opposed to onshore sailing, which is much harder). One of the boats I sailed on was called Tomcat, named after the F-14, but before it was at the Naval Academy, it had in fact been owned by the former Spanish King. Or something. It was called something else then. But then again I don’t recall anything being gilded, so who knows. I also sailed with Ted Kennedy on that boat.)

With some day left to burn we checked out a final few things. Right next to the palace (or I guess right next to the big ole royal (?) cathedral next to the palace are the Muslim Walls of Madrid. They were super nice! I had thought for some reason they were going to be in like a dingy hole but they are in fact in a very nice, very well-kept parklet. The walls date to the 9th century, when Madrid was a Muslim town and known for its springs. There is an apartment building also sitting like right on top of them, which, wow, living on history there, and from the bottom of the wall you look up at the massive cathedral and there is probably a metaphor there besides just being extremely impressive, visually. The park was filled with cats which we cooed over. So cool to be in the midst of centuries-spanning continuity!

History absorbed, we made our way up towards the Plaza de Sol, though not in much of a hurry. We poked into some gift shops and got some gelato and macaroons (which is a lot of cultures all smashed into one thing). At another candy shop we got some nougat to send home and then finally admired some people trying to touch a bear’s butt:

Not a bad final day in Madrid. But onto the next city and next adventures!