December 16th And now for something completely different

Today we decided to see a new part of Madrid, an area called Casa de Campo, it’s out in the west side of the old center of the city.  But the new twist is that we took a gondola ride out to the middle of a large park that originally belonged to the king and was used as a hunting reserve.  On the map it covers a large part of the city which looks like several square miles.  From the gondola terminal we walked to the western edge of the park over the course of an hour then back.  

It’s pretty amazing in that the whole area is covered with trees and low bushes while the ground between them is covered in some sort of grass.   This was the closest that we have come to actually being the country since we arrived and we enjoyed every minute of it.