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Published: December 22nd 2007
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Palacio Real
Royal Palace in Madrid After crashing early at 8 pm, I was wide awake at 4am when I finally woke up. As we were only here for another 8 hours and were going to be in another time-zone by tonight there did not seem to be much point in trying to fix my body clock, so a quick shower then out the door with the Camera and Tripod to the Palace for a early morning photo shoot.
All rugged up with warm jumpers, gloves and beanie I headed out the door at 4:30 am and walked up the road to the Palace about 20 min away. We had wandered down to the northern side of the Palace the previous evening where there is a park with 3 fountains with the palace in the background, with a series of huge spotlights to light the northern façade of the Palace. Unfortunately I did not notice the sign at the park entrance the night before
Open 9am to 9pm. Well I guess that is out so I guess its the eastern façade.
After taking several photos of the Palace and of the marble statues that surround the eastern gardens to the Palace , with my fingers beginning to numb
, I head back the Hotel at about 6 am just in time to pack and grab the buffet breakfast.
Breakfast was good after airline food for 2 days. Croissants, cereal, hot chocolate, bacon and fresh fruit. Then finally leaving the hotel at 8:45 am. As out flight was departing at 12:40pm we did not expect to have too much time, but enough to go for a wander through the Parque Del Buen Retiro.
Parque Del Buen Retiro
Wandering through this large park, the brisk air , packs on our backs we find the Palacio de Cristal, a large glass structure located behind a small lake with fountain and waterfall on its southern bank, the water cascading down over the rock platform. The most unexpected thing about this building is that it seems to be used primarily to store timber.
Wandering past the large artificial lake in front of the “Monumento a Alfonso XII” a large stone monument with steps and statues leading down to the the waters edge; watching the locals row around this lake in circles, going for their Sunday morning jog and roller blading through the park on a cross between roller blades and ski's.
Plaza de la Independencia
Just near the entrance to the metro at the northern end of the Parque Del Buen Retiro is a large Romanesque archway all done up for Christmas. Just as we were about to head down into the subway, a mini? Car rally started heading up the road past us, all with a Police escort.
After jumping on the Metro, and again not having to wait more than 3min for a train, we finally arrived at the airport but were apparently meant to reserve our seats before check-in, so were seated separately.
After checking through security, and expecting a 1.5 hour wait for the flight we went to check the boarding gate only to discover the flight had been delayed by an hour in the 15min since check in. We finally boarded the plane for the 12 hour flight to Mexico City.
Mexico City
We touched down in Mexico City Airport at 7 pm just after another 3 or 4 planes landed
so there was a massive cue to get through Customs. It took us 1.5 hours to finally get through Customs and collect our bags.
The way they select who to search is quite interesting. After handing in your arrival card, you walk over to a machine and press a big red button. When I pressed the button, a big green light came on and I was told I was right to leave. I did not quite understand what this was for at the time, but later discovered it is like a lottery, if the light comes up red, they do a full search of your bags and persons. Guess I had to have some luck after all the flight delays over the last few days.
We negotiated our way down to the Taxi departure area, where you pre-pay for your taxi ticket. Jumped in a nice Taxi and headed through at about 9pm to our hotel. After leaving the airport precinct, we saw the street vendors and their food stands, and prostitutes lining both sides of the street, standing every few meters. Obviously travelling through the affluent part of town.
When the taxi arrived at the door
to the Hotel and we went to get out, I checked myself for my wallet. It wasn't in my pocket, not on the seat, not down the side of the seat. I know I had it after we left the airport, I was checking the cool paso coins. After 2min of searching I finally found it behind the seat against the post. Two girls couldn't take it Madrid, I wasn't going to lose it in a Taxi ride in Mexico City.
We arrived at our Hotel in the “Cenro Historico” district, checked it and had a basic steak with rice for dinner. After the long flight and customs delay we went for a short stroll through the nearby park, where the music was playing as the street market was packing up from their days trade.
We headed back to the Hotel and finally crashed at about 11pm.
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