September 3rd, Sunday: Day 5

Our breakfast this morning, it was delicious!

We woke up at our hotel early this morning because someone dropped a bowl next door to our room. Andre was very upset at this as it was way too early for him, as he normally liked to sleep in. We all just got up anyways and headed downstairs for our hot complimentary breakfast, walking down the stairs very slowly as we were all still tired. As we ate, Rohan filled us in on the History: Temple of Debod, our first historical attraction stop for the day. He explained that it was a temple based off of the shrines built by the Meroe king Adijalamani meant to honor the goddess Isis and the god Amun. As we sat and ate our breakfast at the table, we all wondered what the temple would actually be like. Tyler pulled up a picture on his phone and started building a replica of the giant Egyptian monument out of some toast that he found lying on the floor! It was hilarious! We finished up our food and headed up back to our room to get dressed for the great adventure that was in store for today. We drove for a long time, to the heart of Madrid, to arrive at the Temple of Debod. We saw a lot of tall skyscrapers as we drove through the city, trying to get to our destination. The temple was on the water, a shallow pool that reflected the stone structures. As we got out of our car, we noticed that there weren't a lot of people there. It was weird, but we continued along the path up to the ancient buildings. We walked onto the large path of cement that was the foundation for the shrine, and we started to take some photos.

This was our view of the Temple of Debod as we walked towards it.

 A man was there telling the few people that were the story of the shrine, saying that the shrine wasn't actually built in Madrid, and rather it was built very close to a place called Aswan in upper Egypt. He also said that Roman rulers actually helped complete the building after they annexed Egypt. After a few hours at the Temple, we got in our car and headed to a nearby place for lunch. As we were waiting for our food to be served, we decided to look through a brochure. As looking through, Chris pointed out the Royal Palace, we did not have any plans to visit there before but thought it would be really cool to see. So after lunch, we went to the palace, unfortunately, the line for people without online tickets was long, making our wait about 30 minutes. Once we were able to purchase our tickets (€11/each) we were led into the very open courtyard.

The courtyard of the Royal Palace

After taking many pictures we headed inside where we started our adventure. It started by going into one room where we could view the beautiful features of the palace (similar to a museum) then one room would lead to another and so on, but we were not allowed to visit them all. But the only problem that we encountered was that they did not allow any photography when inside. I really wanted to get pictures, so I whipped out my phone, and pretended that I was looking stuff up, instead taking pictures. The whole time that I was doing that, I was praying that a security guard would not catch me.

The banquet hall inside of the palace

After about 30 minutes of touring the rooms inside of the hot and stuffy palace, we made it out. All of us really enjoyed what we were able to see inside of the palace. We then headed back to our hotel as we wanted to get back for a siesta. I was excited for our next event in the evening as it was very fun to engage in the night life activities at Gran Via, a street with tons of shops and malls. Culture: We headed out right as it was getting dark because we were getting hungry and wanted to eat at Gran Via. When we got dropped off on the sidewalk, the street was bustling with life. There were beautiful lights and tall buildings, it was truly a sight to behold. We passed many different shops as we walked towards our restaurant, and on the corner, we saw a man with a violin playing a song for people as they passed by. I pulled out a coin and I tossed it into his hat that was on the ground, and as we walked to our restaurant, we could hear the sweet music fading into the distance.

Our view of Gran Via Avenue late at night.

 We ate our dinner there, and we walked off the meal by going and visiting different shops. There was even a shop there that had watches for extremely rich people. We walked in and there were cameras everywhere, but we got to see these great expensive gold and diamond encrusted watches. Chris got another hat for himself this time, with it saying in big letters 'Gran Via Avenue'. We got a ride back to our hotel and we called it a night. We had a great time today, so everyone slept very well that night.

History of Royal Palace:

The palace was built on the site of a 9th century Muslim fortress before it burnt down. And is the official place of stay for the Spanish Royal Family, but is only used for state ceremonies. King Alfonso XII was the last ruler to live in the palace during his rule. The palace is 1,450,000 sq ft with 3,418 rooms; making it the largest royal palace in Europe.

Royal Palace from an aerial view