Walking around Madrid, I found this cute little market below this huge monument (who or what for I really have no idea).
I then walked over to the Royal Palace of Madrid, where I ate an ice cream cone and walked around the gardens -
This is actually the official residence of the Spanish Royal Family but apparently they spend most of their time at some other palace outside the city... I don't know why as this is the largest palace in Europe (by square feet) it has 2,800 rooms and is 1.45 million square feet. Seriously who is like "It's totally necessary to have a house with 2,800 rooms, let's build it." I mean 2,800 rooms. That's INSANE. I think to compare Versailles has less then 1,000. It was actually closed for state business when I was there so I couldn't go inside. But it was still nice to walk around it-
But I walked to the church that is attached to the palace-
I'm kind of obsessed with statues on top of buildings :)
The palace is also home to the "Covenant of the Royal Barefoot Nuns" which was founded in the 1500's by a Spanish Princess and still has working nuns at it (22 or 23 I think). At one time it was apparently the convent for royals to enter if they had to/wanted to become nuns, so it was ridiculously wealthy since they came with huge dowries, however apparently there were some restrictions on how the dowries could be spent so by the 1900's they were living in not-so-great conditions. The Pope then gave them special permission to sell some things to raise their living conditions. I was able to peak in (no pictures allowed) but the tours were only in Spanish so I opted to pass on a whole tour.
There is also a great view from the courtyard of the palace-
Next I headed to the Basilica de San Francisco, which was the name sake of one of my favorite cities-
Then walked around the city and admired the cute street signs-
And while I was walking around I saw this-
Which was in a main square, made no sense to me AT ALL and was there the whole time I was in Madrid (4 days). I asked people but never got an answer about what the deal with it was... how random!
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