Spring is here

I have blog block, and more pictures of London and Barcelona to show you, but first I am going to post in real time. Today, my beloved and I had a picnic at Parque Quinta de los Molinos because the almonds are in full bloom, and there has been no rain. If you are in Madrid, you need to go to that park ASAP. It is a magical land, and a great place for a picnic.

If you want to know more about the park you can see my previous posts here and here.

More London and Barcelona photos coming soon, plus this weekend I leave for Montpellier, France!

June

Not too much to report on here in Madrid. I am counting down the days to the end of the "school year". (The semester I teach ends on June 28th.) I am really busy getting things together behind the scenes for my little store that I will open in July.

Whenever I have a free moment I try and enjoy the flowers. We have had a very wet and cold Spring here and very little warmth and sunshine. But, the best part? We are having a Spring! The flowers are blooming slowly and with style.

 We even have days of Simpsons clouds.

I have added to my own little container garden too.

Update on a sunny Sunday

I am having technical problems loading photos onto my old computer. This mini post will be a test post from my phone.
Some views of Retiro, Madrid's giant and beautiful park, yesterday.

P. Quinta de la Fuente del Berro

Tis the season for park visiting , in between the rain storms, here in Madrid. Brace yourself for a slew of pretty European park pictures. 

Today's park is a lesser known park so all links to park information will be in Spanish. I will do my best to translate the relevant bits for English speaking readers, but a good percentage of my readers are bilingual, hence, the included links.

Parque Quinta de la Fuente del Berro 17th century garden.

Once, probably used as a palace outside of the city now it has quite definitely in the city and is only a 15 minute stroll from my home. It has been changed hands in the royal circles since the 17th century, and has been a public park since 1954.

Fuente means fountain, and the park is named for the great tasting water this fountain gave.

In fact there used to be a stream nearby (between where the photo below was taken ,and those buildings) but there is now a circular highway (M30) running over the stream.

Still this park is a very pleasant place to quietly stroll on a weekend afternoon.

This morning at work

I have visited a new park this past "bank holiday" or "puente", but today the weather is so lovely I am going to celebrate spring again. I will save the park post for another day.

As some of you know I teach English as well as trying to get my own little business off of the ground. This year I am with a new company, with a better schedule and all of my classes happen in one "district".

I like my students, I love being able to create my own classes and the hours are not bad. The only drawback is that it is an hour long commute on the metro and I have to change trains 3 times (each way).

Today there was a strike of metro workers, because apparently some Olympic comity is visting Madrid to look over it's infrastructure. Usually I am able to avoid using the metro during peak hours, but not today.

I have never felt to claustrophobic in my life. I was literally pushed on the the train by a wave of people and the only thing I had to be grateful about was the fact that the person who was forced to touch me inappropriately was a woman.

It took me several minutes to calm down afterwards, and the beauty of the landscaping at my "office" helped. I hope you like it too.

Parque Quinta de los Molinos, parte dos

The family is going through a difficult time right now. So I am going to bring you another photo post from this past Saturday. Parque de los Molinos is a park with a ton of early flowers, the star of which, is the almond tree.

So if you are going through a difficult time too, take time to enjoy the beauty of these flowers and to know that in the Northern hemisphere spring is coming.