Our first tourist day

On Friday the 14^th, Ben and I got to be tourists. We started off by almost being robbed by some gypsies. We were warned about them but I didn’t really expect to encounter them. We were walking down the street when all of a sudden three teenage girls physically blocked our path and shoved some papers in our faces asking us to sign them so that Madrid can have better handicap support…or something like that. It was really hard to see the papers because they kept waving them around. We were just going to sign them to get the girls out of our face when all of a sudden I look over and Ben has an iron grip on his wallet. One of the girls had reached for Ben’s pocket where his wallet was. He told me once we got away from them that she said she wanted to see his license. So Ben has a death grip on his wallet and they are trying to point to his license and we are trying to walk by them but they won’t get out of our way. Another lady comes by and says something, I didn’t catch it, but it distracts the girls long enough for us to get away. About 100 feet later, a policeman asks Ben if he checked his wallet to make sure they hadn’t taken anything.  Ben told him had and that the girls hadn’t got anything. Then, another 100 feet down the sidewalk, an elderly man comes towards us trying to show us something in his hand and talking to us in Spanish. We ignore him because one, we were just accosted by the girls and didn’t want to go through that again and two, I thought he could’ve been a beggar. The beggars here are much more pushy and in your face than I am used to. So I just said to him “No, no, no” and kept walking but then he said “policia, policia” so we stopped. He asked us “Los romanos, los han robado?” (Did the gypsies steal from you?) I told him no and he kept going about his business of trying to track the girls down.

After that bit of excitement we were at our destination point. El Palacio Real and El Catedral de la al mudena. First we walked around the gardens outside the palace and got some pictures of the surrounding area. Then we took an audio tour of the palace. It was breathtaking!! We got to see dining rooms, smoking rooms, a pharmacy, the armory room, personal bedrooms and entertainment rooms of past monarchs, a sample of the dishes (silver and crystal) and cutlery that was used and still used on special occasions. We also got to see the royal chapel and throne room. Pictures were not allowed inside but I snuck a couple.  The art work and decorations was beyond intricate. Instead of wall paper some of the walls were covered in elaborately embroidered fabric or covered with massive, intricately woven tapestries. Other walls were covered with 3D porcelain statues from floor to ceiling or beautifully painted tiles from the Orient. All the ceilings had some sort of mural painted on it. The whole palace was absolutely breath- taking. The armory was pretty cool too; so many different suits of armor from the various kings. We saw some of the first cross bows, cannons and guns; plenty of suits of armors for knights, kings and even kids. We also saw jousting sticks, swords, shields, armor for horses and even a dog! The most amazing thing was the elaborate intricate designs on the armor and shields, some depicting Roman life, battles of the gods or just some neat looking designs. A couple of shields even had precious jewels embedded in them. The armor we saw ranged over many decades and came from a few different countries. We saw Japanese and Mongolian armor in addition to the Spanish armor.

After the palacio, we were going to go the catedral but it closed in half an hour so we will do that another day. While there though we saw signs for a crypt so we went and saw that. Pictures were allowed here so I went a little crazy. J Same thing here, the statues and mosaic artwork was so beautiful! After walking around for about twenty minutes I started paying closer attention to the dates on the crypts and I realized that people are still being laid to rest there to this day! And, there are some open spaces if anyone is looking to be buried there. It was weird walking over the crypts and I tried to walk around them but they are so jam packed on the floor it was hard to do sometimes. Ben found someone who was 106 when she died!

After the crypt we saw a Islamic wall that is from the 9^th century! It is one of the rare remnants of Islamic Madrid. The wall protected a fortress built by the founder of Madrid, Emir Mohammed I.  The wall was called al-Marjit which is Arabic for “source of water”. It was later changed to Marjet which was later chang.ed to the current name Madrid.

After the wall we walked through Plaza de la villa and Plaza Mayor where we eventually ended up in Sol and took the metro home for a siesta. All in all it was a great tourist day. 

El Palacio Real

Notice the head under his foot...

The court yard where a lot of military drilling went on and where the military would be presented to the royal family.

I snuck these pictures. Look at the tapestries and ceiling in the next picture though! The rooms only became more and more elaborate!

The royal throne room. The thrones are in the center of the picture. The walls are covered floor to ceiling in red velvet. 

The Orient Court Yard.

The view from across the street.

The crypt: 

You can make a little offering and you get to take a card with the Saints' prayer on it.

Sr. D. Joaquin del Soto Hidalgo is laid to rest here. His crypt is laid out in the following pictures. It is pretty elaborate!

The entrance to Sr. D. Joaquin's crypt.

 There he is....

An image of Señora Flor de la Flor de Lis

"If with happiness i live, with greater happiness I die because Christ is resurrected."

Entire families are buried in the same tomb:

     *We are born to die, we die in order that we live.

These look to be individual tombs for ashes.

Saint Fernando

The most recently buried woman in this tomb was 106 years old!

The view from the outside.

The Islamic wall:

This is a view of the city from that time period. It shows where the wall was around the city. 

Plaza Mayor: Lots of fun place to eat in here!