Today, we went on a guided tour with IBE Tours to the Madrid Royal Palace and Retiro Park with tapas tasting. The palace used to be the home of the royals but they don’t live there any more. It’s used for special occasions now. It’s the 2nd largest palace in Europe. It has over 3000 rooms and designed in the style of Versailles. All of the rooms were beautiful. Unfortunately, we couldn’t take pictures of most of the rooms. But, here are some of what we could take.

Click on the picture below to see the full photo album.

After our tour of the Madrid Palace, it was time for tapas tasting. Tapas are one of the things Spain is known for. We went to a local bar and they brought out a variety. Tapas are sort of like appetizers. They’re mostly popular at night as you hop from bar to bar with friends.

Not sure what we had. I know there was shrimp, bread and chicken.

I had mine with sangria.

Next on the agenda was a tour of Retiro Park. It was their version of “Central Park”. Such a lovely park.  There were a couple of museums, street vendors and just a lot to see.

There were a couple of museums in the park and we went to one of them. They had an exhibition of the works of Mario Metz. His art is a combination of industrial with fine art. I can't say I know a lot about art, but it was really interesting. If you want to see more of his art, click on the picture below.

Retiro Park also has the oldest tree in Madrid. It’s a type of willow tree, believed to be about 400 years old.

At least today was nice and sunny. This morning was pretty foggy though. Below are some pictures of our morning walk before our tour.

For dinner, we went to dinner in the Huertas neighborhood which was recommended by our tour guides. We ended up at a restaurant called El Madroño. John had the beef tenderloin and I had the grilled shrimp. It was really good but the shrimp was a lot of work because I had to behead it and de-shell it. People like sucking on the head, but I’m not one of them. Overall, it was an enjoyable meal.

Tapas for appetizers

Our main meals. Yum!

After dinner, we walked back to our hotel and passed by a bunch of outside eateries. It was a nice night, so we sat down at a table and ordered a bottle of wine. It was a perfect ending to an enjoyable day.