Day Off

As dorm parents, we are encouraged to take one day a week as our "day off," since our evenings and weekends are when we are "on." It doesn't happen often that it falls on a day when we truly have no other commitments, especially with David having been in driving and language school and Keri helping out at school more often now, but on our days off, it does give us a break in that the boys usually go to someone else's house for dinner that evening. Today was our day off for this week and because the weather was warm things are just beginning to bloom, we decided to take the afternoon and head into downtown Madrid. We have heard of Retiro Park, but had never been. I guess a fair comparison would be Central Park in NYC. It was enormous, lush and green. The kids had a blast playing on the very cool playground, then watching the fish in the lake and just frolicking in the grass and picking daisies all afternoon. Unfortunately, our camera is out of order for a while so I just found these pics on google.

This is one of the famous pics of Retiro Park. You can rent these paddle boats for about $5.00 for 45 minutes. We didn't do that today, but maybe another day...

This is another famous monument in Madrid, called "Puerta de Alcala." The entrance to the park is just on the left.

We live about 15 - 20 minutes north of the closest Metro/Subway stop. Usually, we drive there and park, then take the Metro into downtown. It's fast, affordable and David loves not having to drive downtown.

From the park, we walked a few blocks just to explore a bit more. This building is the City Hall.

This is a random picture of a building, but it could be any building in downtown Madrid. They are all this beautiful. There's just something about being in a big city...