Day 62: Aranjuez

Short drive today for another World Heritage site, this time it was the Cultural Landscape of Aranjuez, about an hour's drive east of Toledo. We set off around 11am and arrived about midday, checked into our hotel in the middle of town then headed out exploring.

Aranjuez is heritage listed because it's the site of the former Spring palace for the 17th and 18th century royals, and has an enormous amount of landscaped gardens and carefully managed plazas. The entire town is basically structured around this, sort of like Canberra though on a smaller scale.

We headed off into the city, checking out a few various plazas and gardens. Some of them were beautiful and in great condition, though in others the water features were drained and surrounded by graffiti. Got in trouble at one garden because the sign said no dogs and we'd walked straight past it (hoping nobody would notice), but alas. Eventually settled on alternating wanders through the garden, a bit of a hassle but we managed OK.

The town was fairly interesting but not the prettiest we've been too. Definitely something different though, as it was much newer and considered to be a classic example of 18th century town planning. Back to the hotel in the late afternoon where we relaxed and used laptops for a while. Had dinner out in the evening at a nearby kebab restaurant! Spanish food is great but none the worse for a change. Last stop for the evening for me was the hotel bar, where I watched the Champions League quarter-finals on TV as Real Madrid knocked out Bayern Munich in controversial circumstances (the usual offside goals etc).Read more