The Royal Palace

Saturday was a lazy day for me while Josh was in his conference. I went back to sleep after breakfast and basically did nothing until he got out. He skipped the session immediately after lunch so we could go visit the Royal Palace. The conference runs until 9pm the last two days and we leave Madrid Monday morning, so we don't have a lot of time left to visit things during the day.

We saw some interesting things along the way...

 There are lots of characters that we're familiar with in the squares. Most of the costumes are pretty horrible, but they're entertaining.

 Gepetto's shop!

 Pronovias! If I was still engaged while we were here, I probably would have spent a full day in this store!

The palace is amazing! It's so big, so there's lots of walking! We did the audio tour and it was pretty good. It's definitely a lot cheaper than going on a guided tour and we didn't have to be part of a group. Rick Steves has a great self guided tour in his book, but we thought it would be faster to be able to listen. The palace has over 2,000 rooms, but the tour took us through 23. The royal pharmacy was closed, so we didn't get to see it. There are SO many chandeliers throughout the palace, very old art of course, silk walls in some of the rooms, it's just crazy. To walk through a palace that so many royal families have lived in was an unbelievable feeling.

We weren't able to take pictures inside any of the rooms, but we did get one just inside the entrance.