November Travels - Parque de El Retiro

This year for my birthday I decided on something a little different. My boyfriend's birthday is two weeks before mine so we decided, instead of presents, we would take a trip. We'd initially looked in September and Madrid was our chosen destination.

At the end of October we booked our 4 day trip for the 14th November, barely 2 weeks before we travelled. 

My first quick tip if you're doing a city break, spend that little bit extra on a hotel in the centre or very near. We saved (quite a lot actually) to stay outside of the centre, but the 20 minute walk and then 15 minutes on the metro was just way too much each way, everyday. 

The room was great though, I wouldn't object to staying in an Ibis Budget hotel again, more than enough for what we needed.

Plus the shower head changed colour depending on temperature! Amazing! (although difficult to take pictures of)

So anyway, past the boring part of the room, we spent most of the second day in Parque de El Retiro, the enormous greenhouse was absolutely beautiful in an Autumn month, the colours were so vibrant through the glass.

If any of you have read much of my blog before you'll know my boyfriend is massively into his fishing, it didn't take long for him to spot the carp in the lake.

Which lead us to hire a rowing boat for 45 minutes, I think it was about 8 euros which was so affordable!

We had lunch in the park in a little cafe, we spent most of the time feeding little birds (all the way to Madrid for the entertainment of feeding some birds)

Madrid was lovely I'd definitely go again one day but with plenty more money saved so we could actually go inside a few more places, but for a budget birthday treat for the both of us it was more than enough!

I'll post another post or two sharing more pictures, I thought the park was gorgeous enough to deserve it's own post!

Oh yeah and if you go anywhere abroad, remember your travel adaptors, we got stung for 16 euros to get a plug we could use, ouch!

Thanks for reading,

Rachel xx