Sunday, May 20 - Birding and Baroque

Awoke at 6:30 and watched a large thunder storm approach over the plains from the south and back light the cathedral. Overcast with on and off light rain all day.

Drove south through the ski resorts again and into a large regional La Pedriza park that resembles the backcountry of San Diego in that the mountains appear to consist of jumbled piles of large boulders. We couldn’t drive to the top as Sunday tour busses had filled up the parking spaces, so we set off lower down through chaparral full of blooming rock rose, Cistus, that seems to take the place of Ceanothus in Calif. The shrubs fill the valley floor and up hillsides and are covered with large 5” white crinkly blossoms with bright yellow centers. There was also a lot of bright purple French Lavender and blue echium, plus dozens of kinds of yellow composites. The wildflowers here really beat out those of home. We hiked about four miles up into the rocks and saw the Azure-winged Magpie and Rock Bunting for new lifers.

It was about 4 PM by now so we headed back, stopping at San Ildefonso, the summer castle of Felipe V which was built in the early 1700s. I was faint with hunger by then as we hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Unlike our friends, the Brucatos, who are now touring France and Italy and daily describe their sumptuous lunches, RRZ runs a rugged tour and we are always on the brink of collapse with fatigue and starvation. Fortunately we were able to grab an ice cream bar at a café before we entered the palace grounds to explore the gardens before they close at six. Baroque isn’t the word! I’ve never seen such ornate and pretty grotesque statues of all sorts of animal and human combinations! The gardens cover many acres and we could only see a bit until the famed “turning on of the fountains” which only occurs at 5 PM a couple days a week. We entered a large maze with 7’ high walls of a chestnut-like shrub, confident that our GPS would make it pretty simple, but got amazingly disoriented very quickly and found our GPS screen rapidly becoming a confusing blob of black dots! Panic started to set in, but we managed to find the correct route out. There must be bodies of expired tourists in the far reaches of the maze. It’s really confusing!! At five we gathered with a crowd at a large pool with statues of Neptune and many other fishy people and suddenly forty foot plumes of water started shooting up into the air. After ten minutes the water was turned off and we were herded to yet another and more elaborate fountain and finally a third huge one. We staggered out to our car and 20 minutes got back to our hotel, showered and headed for the bar! Dinner of seafood salad, wonderful rich veal cheeks stewed in rich gravy and duck pate with fruit sauce.

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