Madrid

I had my FCE exam on my birthday, but I had free time in the afternoon. I went to Madrid just for two days, but I could visit the most important places for me. It could sound bad, but for my birthday I wanted to visit one of my fave shops: La Cure Gourmande. I found this shop in Barcelona, when I had my first holidays after many years. In all Spain there's just one shop in Barcelona and another one in Madrid. Don't panic, they do have on-line shop now. Their biscuits are just amazing, a-ma-zing! If you visit my instagram you can see the amazing biscuit tins I bought (full of biscuits).

I fell in love with the Plaza Mayor, it was getting dark, so I loved it most! It was plenty of tourists like us, so I didn't take many pictures. Well, it was also because of I was starving and the smell of all the restaurants around was amazing. We had two squid sandwich and refreshments for 12€, quite cheap in relation with the quantity! I think I've never drunk so many tonics in a trip.

Click on the pics for original size

We could even go for a little walk through the park El Retiro. It's crazy beautiful and you can have a heat break inside the park. Thanks to all those giant trees that provided us of good shades. Don't you like this trees below? They're such a cute trees!

Here we have the Palacio de Cristal (inside El Retiro). It was built for a special exposition many years ago and it's beautiful. From the inside, in my opinion, is not a big thing. Maybe because I didn't like much the current expostition (Imaginary Columns by Mitsuo Miura). I'd prefer if they have it plenty of flowers and butterflies, even though it'll be half plenty of caterpillars.

In front of the Palacio de Cristal you can see this. It's a small lake with a interesting stairs down the lake. The lake is plenty of turtles and some ducks. I got impressed with the amount of turtles there are!! And some of them are as big as the ducks, incredible. 

We went also to El Prado, the most famous museum in Spain. The queue was enormous, so we sat down in front of the entrance and wait patiently. In 15 minutes the queue was over and we could enter without standing there with the hot sun burning our delicate skin. If you want to visit El Prado notice that the entrance is free from Monday to Saturday from 18:00 to 20:00 and Sunday/bank holidays from 17:00 to 19:00. Remember you don't need to queue, just don't despair if you see many people queueing watching you while you're laying around like saying: "You're not gonna enter if you don't queue, idiot."

Finally we headed to the Atocha train station. Again, plenty of turtles, can you believe it? Every single bubble is a turtle. As a conclusion, my exam was a good deal.