Advertisement
Published: June 20th 2014
Today is a historic and important day for Spain. King Juan Carlos has ruled for 39 years and abdicated the power to his son Prince Felipe. We are so lucky that the ceremony for Felipe to take the oath and become King took place just across the street. The police presence was absolutely unbelievable as they were posted everywhere on the street, on building rooftops, flying around in helicopters and on bicycles, motorcycles and cars.
We quickly headed up to the hotel rooftop terrace on 6th floor and found a great corner where we could watch the pageantry and preparation. We watched several groups of military, the band, some in dark uniforms, some white, some in green then the color guard. We also saw the 1920's style Rolls Royce convertible that King Felipe and Queen Letizia will ride in during the parade through Madrid to celebrate the coronation. There are thousands of citizens on all the streets of the parade celebrating the new monarch proudly waving their Spanish flags.
After the coronation and parade were ended, we headed out to lunch and stopped in Puerta de Santa Cruz where there were many restaurants all with outdoor seating. We chose
to lunch at Restaurant Cinco Jocab. Jim had caesar salad with chicken and I had a salad with a filo pocket of wonderful goat cheese, spinach with walnut vinagrette dressing, walnuts and some red fruit. Delicious. We walked to Puerta del Sol and wandered about the square. Everything is so incredibly crowded due to the coronation. We took a leisurely stroll towards our hotel and found it easily. This is a great location and we really enjoy our stay here. We cooled off in the modern looking bar and just had iced tea and some really tasty almonds coated lightly with olive oil and salt.
We had a Pintox tour scheduled this evening but it was nothing like the fantastic tour we had in San Sebastián. Wines and tapas were terrible and we left early along with a couple from Birmingham AL. We took a taxi back to our hotel as it was starting to rain and split a sandwich and called it an evening. Really, another great day,
Advertisement
Tot: 0.101s; Tpl: 0.021s; cc: 5; qc: 46; dbt: 0.0632s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
