Casa De Campo

Leading up to the weekend the weather prediction was for a cold and rainy Saturday but luckily for us as we arose the weatherman had predicted a balmy 11C for the day. So we decided to go exploring.

We caught the metro from Las Tablas down to Principe Pio which is down south at the palace gardens which is where we were aiming for. You have to change trains to get there even though it's all on the same line. I think that's a demonstration of just how far Las Tablas is from Madrid proper. Principe Pio is the metro stop in a rather grand old train station. There is a super new mall in the station too that has Spanish favorites like Dukin Doughnuts, Starbucks, Burger King and Taryn's favourite KFC. We did however buy Taryn a warm hat and Kirsten some bright orange gloves from the nice Bangladeshi man running the stall outside.

And so we set off from the mall to find our gardens.

However, as any good explorer will tell you if you manage to make it to your final destination the first time then you won't have any good stories to tell and what will you do tomorrow? So luckily for us we made it to the wrong place.

And what good luck it was. The palace gardens (Jardiens del Campo del Moro) where we were trying to go, were actually only a tunnel away from where we ended up, but Casa de Campo was a brilliant alternative find. If you look on a map you will see that they are massive. We however got as far as the lake. This journey of about 2kms took us a good 3 hours including lunch (see next post) and the spotting and correct identification of a group of White Storks circling overhead, 3 Great Spotted Woodpeckers pecking trees in the park and a Great Cormorant sitting under the fountain in the middle of the lake (because what's an European lake without a fountain).

Once our loop was done it was time to jump back on the metro (which somehow I don't think I paid for and the trip home. Followed by naps all round and some general relaxing.Read more