Wednesday 13 jun - Parades and Post Offices

Woke up with light and swifts making a lot of noise outside the window. I slept on the sofa bed and Maureen was upstairs in the loft. I heard her moving but she didn’t get up. I had no idea what time it was, as I couldn’t find my watch. I got up dressed and left searching out a coffee/tea shop. I went to the angel plaza and found the Cinco Jotos (the 5 J’s) which is right across the street from our Villa Rosa restaurant that we are going to tonight. Found out it was around 830 which means that I slept for about 71/2 hours. and I got up around 8 Astounding.  I had a tea and fresh squeezed orange juice and wrote in my journal.

Went back to the apartment around 930 and Maureen was still sleeping. I tried to be quiet opening a bag of peanuts but I guess I was too noisy as the first words out of her mouth were “even with earplugs that is too loud”. Good Morning Maureen.

After bout an hour and a half, around 11, we headed down to the cathedral to get our credentials for the camino walk. on the way down there was a parade of horses and riders in fancy military uniforms and carriages  with footman going in the same direction as us. I took off following it trying to get some great shots.

I knew that Maureen could find me as I was wearing my bright pink hat. The parade went down the hill and turned into the palace right across from the cathedral.. I believe that they do this a few times a day for the tourists. There was an Honour guard and a band with lots of people watching down at the palace. It was impressive. The guard was well drilled. It was very warm out already at noon and I felt for those guys standing to attention out on the parade square.

Maureen and I then went into the cathedral Santo Maria Real de la Alemudena Museum. it is very different from most of the churches that we had been in before. Very bright colours with modern designs. We were not supposed to take photos in some of the areas where they had religious paraphernalia and memorabilia on display. Some really beautiful things with lots of gold, silver, gems silks and tapestries. A collection of clothing that at first we thought might be for dolls but that we discovered they used to dress the statues of the baby Jesus “el Nino” on different days.

The tour took us up onto the roof of the cathedral. Nice views of Madrid. Lots of church steeples and pretty red roofs. 

After the tour of the outside we got to go inside and the colours were again very bright on the ceilings and domes. I lit candles (.20E) at every shrine and said Hail Mary’s for Bill. They had a lot of saints there but not St Teresa of Avilla. The Gentleman told me she was in Avilla.

After the cathedral we went in search of the Bishops office to get our Credential.  One guard told us to come back a three but we kept looking and we did find his office with a lady coming out of it  who told us to wait until we were invited in. I stood in the doorway and looked into an office with a desk and a little old man.

 He said something in Spanish and then motioned for us to come in. He spoke no english. Our terrible Spanish and pointing to maps that he gave us finally produced two credentials one for each of us. We were registered to walk the camino, Maybe not on the dates that we were actually going to be walking but we were registered. We paid our 7 Euros and said gracias and left the poor man to his lunch.

We caught the red bus back up the hill and got off at the plaza del Sol. We headed up to find the post office which you wouldn't think would be difficult but turned into quite and adventure for us.  We asked the police who told us it was just up the street at the court inglaze. so we headed up the street and could not find the cort inglaze. we asked a man who told us to take the first right going back down the hill  and we would see the the court inglees and it was inside. the court ingles was a store.

 OK we went down the street and to the right and walked a bit .... there it was, this store as big as the bay called El Corte Ingles. We entered. It was like being transported back to north america only it was brighter and busier and full of lovely products that we could buy. We decided to look at a few things before trying to find the post office.  Baby clothes for Maureen's Rose's  twins and a dress for my Mary. When we first brought some things up the  counter the saleslady asked where we were from and told us to go upstairs and register to get a 10% discount coupon.

Heck yea. Up we went. The store has this great policy that tourists register, give thier passport info, and they get a coupon for 10% off of all their purchases for a day. Maureen did not have her passport on her so we used mine. We got some little souvenirs for us both. Maureen bought some green shoes and a scarf and a  green shawl. I bought a dress for Mary, so cute with eyelet and blue ribbon. Then Maureen changed her mind about the green shoes and tried to return them but could not return them as the language barrier was too great and we had had that discount so she ended up keeping them.
We then tried to find the post office. Each person we asked got us closer. First direction - in the basement - down we go. Second direction - down the hall to the elevator and go down to the basement- OK over and down we go. Third direction - go down the hall and out the door- alright we must be getting close now. Fourth direction -  cross the lane in the underground parking lot and through the door. ?????? We found it. who puts a post office in the underground parking lot of a major retail outlet. Spain. We stood in line and discussed this strange spanish custom, also what size box would we need to ship a few things home so that we don't have to carry everything we bought on the Camino. I bought some stamps and a 2.5 kilo box off we went to the apartment which actually wasn't that far away. It was now 3 in the afternoon. I pulled my things out that I wanted to ship back and put them in the box. I was done by 330 Maureen took a little longer to find what she wanted to send back.

We had a bite to eat for a late lunch.
Maureen wanted to carry the parcel down to the Prado instead of coming back for it so at 6 we   caught the red bus and headed down to get in for free. Maureen got her picture, Murillos' St John the Baptist and Jesus when they were toddlers, printed like a painting that she could take home and frame there. I wandered around and enjoyed Rico who had a painting of the Alhambra and very nice it was too. A few more souvenirs and we were done.
We left the Prado at around 715 and caught the red bus up the hill to the closest stop we could get to the post office. Found our way back down to the parking garage with almost no trouble and mailed it away $E29.70. We were out of there by 8pm.

There were a lot of people out in the Plaza del Sol which we had to cross to get to our restaurant reservation for 730 (we were late). Some kind of activity, probably soccer related but we did not have time to stop  to find out as we were about an hour late for our reservation. Villa Rosa was very good to us even though we were an hour late and brought us to our table and we ordered and the show started. We ate while the show was going on. It was a big place and not full. we wondered if the second show was fuller as the Spanish love to do things late. The show was very good, 2 ladies and 1 man dancing, one man singing and one guitar player. the food was great too. the show started at 830 and was over by 930 so got to bed earlier than the night before. Read a little of my book Wicked and slept all night long.