Casual walk through Buen Retiro Park

Karen and I walked through Buen Retiro Park the other day where we enjoyed beautiful park landscapes as well as the thousands of European pilgrims (there seemed to be an significant number of non-English speaking pilgrims there). The park felt similar to my experience at Central Park in New York with expansive open spaces filled with beautiful trees and greenery, sans the "New York Aroma" and crime :) .




Buen Retiro Park is a large park, from what I understand to be about 300 acres. The park is at the edge of the city center, a bit of a walk from where we are staying and is also very close to the Prado Museum (I hope pilgrims in our group blogs about our amazing tour of the Prado Museum today - hint, hint). There were plenty of beautiful sculptures and monuments around the park and we took several pictures to share with those who couldn't come with us.

In the park we also found a lively lake filled with plenty of pilgrims rowing around in boats and swimming in their bathing suits, or the like. At one point we witnessed nearly half the pilgrims in the lake singing a chant (we think they were French). What a wonderful experience, for sure! I would imagine this lake would be peaceful during a time where hundreds of thousands of pilgrims weren't visiting. 

Peace to you all. Thank you for your prayers!

Mike Wright