Green Thumb

One thing I was struck by in Madrid was the frequency of parks and gardens. I’m no stranger to European parks—Brussels has two formidable ones which I was a frequent visitor of— but the scale of Madrid’s greenery is quite opulent (there's that word again). Most date back to the grandeur of the Spanish Empire when having a large, well-tended garden was a matter of pride. In any case, they’re gorgeous. The royal gardens (the ones beside the royal palace) where pretty impressive in their scale.



Then there were the Royal Botanical Gardens. These were for more scientific purposes than for show. There were flowers and cacti and other groupings of plants that I can't name. Each had the name of the plant and throughout there were statues of famous Spanish botanists. Can you every imagine a Canadian botanist getting their own statue? Can anyone even name a Canadian botanist?

Pretty flowers

Did I mention they have a greenhouse on site?

Royal cacti

Rows upon rows of famous botanists

By far the best is El Retiro. The Central Park of Madrid, it is located right beside the Prado. I meandered into it after my foray into the Prado and I was looking for a quite spot to read. It offered that and more.

This isn't even the half of it. Maybe 1/24

It's what I call perspective. My shadow and the length of the park

After I read a few chapters, I remembered that there was a memorial to the victims of the Madrid bombings in 2005 located somewhere in the park. I set out to find it, not knowing where it would take me. What I realized is that they should really offer maps of the park itself. There are so many things to see inside it. There’s the memorial, then there’s a pond where people row boats in front of a huge statue of Alphonso XII. There’s also various statues to famous Spaniards.

The pond and row boats

But the real interesting thing is the Crystal Palace, which is indeed made of crystal—OK, glass, but that ruins the romance of it. I spent, without exaggeration, 2 hours in there looking for the Palace and memorial. And I still didn’t find the memorial, try though I did. But here’s the palace.

Notice how the light has changed. That's how long I was there.