Can you believe that no one lives in the above house?!

We passed this edifice to the stonbe masons talents on a paid bus tour. This palace was left to the people of Spain ( I think) and is reputedly the best maintained building on the continent, but the window paint was peeling Tee Hee I spotted that ! I think it was the summer palace or something for the Monachy and with its views across the valle over the "Peons" it sounds about right.
The weather was in the high seventies and eighty on a couple of days. Yes it has its Mac Donalds and Starbucks (doesn`t everywhere?) and its ladies of the Afternoon (working girls) all slavic and eastern european. Gypsys were rife and a guy had his pocket picked as we sat for afternoon tea, but the "gypsy" was humilated into giving it back and her pleas that it was "someone else and they went that way Senor"ended in her suddenly saying Oh look! it was on the floor all the time! yea right!!! I reckon that there were enough Policemen around to about the ratio of ten to one! OK it was the area of the Paliament building but 10 to 1 its a bit high. The Parks were special and the cultivated flower beds around the many statues something else. the work ethic was good with people working in the streets etc until 22-00 . I loved the Museo Naval ( naval museum) and the Prado Museum (art)

Would I go back again NOOOOOOOO!!!! not with average meal for four at £150-00 plus a burger ( supplied by the hotel as a snack) that split my tongue with a piece of bone in it and cause me to have to get the plane whilst virtually drinking my own blood ( for about six hours) The cut would not heal and ended with me in Casualty at my local hospital, arriving at 21-00 and finally getting away at 01-30 today with it still bleeding, a little, which I agreed to put up with. Why didn`t I go the the Madrid hospital? I made the right choice "not to" as I would have missed the plane and all that goes with it (friends staying to make sure that one was OK etc etc!) The bleeding stopped by 07-30 today What a poorly soilder I was? I couldn`t even have a plaster to put on it, and when they injected the anisthetic into my tongue prior to stitching the bleeding got less so they decided not to stitch it. Was I sore? have you ever tried pushing your tongue out onto a hyperdermic needle, no wonder it stopped bleeding it had had enough after about twenty shots and was too frightenent to bleed much anymore! te Hee!