Now that all of my bachelor stuff is over, and since it’s been over a year since my wedding, I decided to get some of my honeymoon photos on the blog as well.  Melody and I ended up doing a backpacking trip across southern Spain and some other parts of western Europe.  It was a great time, were we learned a lot more about each other and what happens as well live bare bones.  This was by no means the typical honeymoon, but a time to explore.

We only had around 3 weeks of vacation to use, and I decided to get a 21 day Eurail pass to accompany us on our trip.  This ticket isn’t a free ride everywhere, but a lot of reservations for seats had to be made in certain countries.  We decided to no use it on our first day in Madrid, and wait until the second day to actually activated it.  We ended up landing in Madrid and had roughly a day and a half on our itinerary to explore.  Instead of using any taxi, our trip was mostly public transportation in the cities, or just normal walking.

We headed to the Retiro Park as our first destination.  Here we passed by a few book shops on the way to the center.

It was a beautiful park with lush greens, but the weather was really humid during our stay in Spain.  We also didn’t remember about the siestas, so a lot of places were closed throughout our trip.

A view down the strip, only one of the stores were open at the time.

As we explored the park, I had to get a few touristy shots of Melody.  We really didn’t have time to setup shot, but instead this trip was to get an idea of the place and figure out where we would like to spend more time on our subsequent trips back.

The exercise area in the park.

And there were also different gardens in the area, I believe this is Jardin Botanico

I also got a few photos of Melody, a mandatory Honeymoon thing.

Here we found couples walking through fields of flowers.

We also entered into the Palacio de Crista.  It was a wonderful piece of art.

Another view.

And here is the outside of the Crystal Palace.

As we wondered the park, there were a few free museums that we ended up getting to.  Here Melody stands at the edge of one of the exhibits.

And me, I was more afraid I would be yelled at if I actually sat down.

And some other interesting pieces were held here.

Selfie!  It was actually a one way mirror, I guess people would just sit and watch others.

We headed to the Boating Lake as well, a romantic way to watch the setting sun.

Another view of the lake.

And lastly, as we were headed to grab some dinner, we saw a magnificent cathedral.  The architecture at these places is simply stunning, and I wish it was about workmanship rather than price nowadays.

Last light, hitting the cathedral.

After we wondered around to find the best place to eat, we went in to take a look at a market suggested through our tour book to see if there was anything good to eat.

This was the first time I experienced some sort of pick pocketing.  As we were walking the town, a random lady attempted to unzip my backpack (which only had my laptop and camera in it) so all heavy stuff.  Melody turned around and yelled “Hey!” I was really confused, thinking that Melody saw a friend, but the baffled thief just stared at us and then ran away.  So I wasn’t really in the mood to take anymore photos, but we ended up in Plaza Mayor for a few shots.

Lesson learned for the rest of the trip, we would be extremely paranoid about our stuff after that.

We headed back to our hotel for the night at the Hotel Regina.

As we headed toward the train station the next day, I ended up getting a few more photos around Madrid.  There were tons of museums that we missed out on, but it is definitely a metropolis that we would be coming back to.  Here we pass by Puerta del Sol, close to where we booked one of our hotels for the night.

And until Barcelona, I leave you here.