Monday, July 21, 2008

El Parque del Buen Retiro

El Parque del Buen Retiro is a famous park in Madrid, Spain. Anyone who was a missionary in the Madrid Missionary Training Center is very familiar with this park. It is where missionaries in training go out to practice their proselyting skills every Saturday. It is one of the scariest experiences for a new missionary that doesn't know the language very well. I know that this park stressed me out on more than one occasion.  
 
Here is one of the sunsets we watched at this park. Beautiful!

Madrid is very proud of this statue, even though I'm not sure why. This is the only statue in the world that is a monument to the devil. It's is called "Monument to the Fallen Angel." No wonder Tyler was so afraid! :)

For a few euros, you can rent a paddle boat for 45 minutes and paddle around a lake in the middle of the park. As a missionary I saw cute young couples in the lake and vowed to myself that I would someday do the same with my spouse. This picture is the fulfillment of my vow. 

This is a picture of Tyler rowing the boat. 

This is a picture of me being rowed in the boat. 
This is the biggest and coolest monument in the whole par. It's right by the lake. We came here on a Saturday night once and it was quite the party! There were tons of people there with various instruments, the most common instrument being a drum. All of the musicians played impromptu together. It was awesome!
  
This building is called The Crystal Palace. It was really pretty. 

My favorite part of seeing the Crystal Palace was seeing these black swans. I've never seen black swans before. We were enthralled!  

5 comments:

Jake and Natalie said...

Yay, you guys posted some blogs!!! Happy Day! :) I love you both SO much! I wish I could have come with!

Alisha said...

I found you!!!
I'm glad we can be blogging buddies along with everything else! Spain is beautiful, I'm glad you had fun over there....someday, maybe I'll make it there.

AZ Mikesells said...

We found you - blog stalking! Enjoyed the tour of Europe!!! Thanks for being the runner between Kenna and my parents. Cathy

strengthmissionblog said...

i LOVED YOUR BLOGGING ABOUT EUROPE.. GOSH, NAT I LOVE YA!

Juli said...

Natalie, I just found your blog! It looks like you two are having a ball. It's funny that they had to put the washing maching in the sink, but there was plenty of room for the bidet.