La Granja de San Ildefonso

In the foothills of the Sierra de Guadarrama is the Royal Palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso, once the summer palace of the royal family.  On a sunny Saturday in May we hopped in the car for a trip out of the city.

The palace, built in the early 1700s, was intended to be a smaller version of Versailles.  With the weather too glorious to waste the day inside, we went for a stroll around the baroque-style gardens and contented ourselves with a peek inside through the windows.

The rambling gardens are dotted with huge fountains and bronze statutes of mythical figures.

Less than an hour's drive from Madrid, the palace and the quaint little town of San Ildefonso surrounding it make a perfect day trip.  After pretending that we weren't lost in the garden's rambling maze, we ambled back into the village for a long, leisurely lunch in the sun, before heading home.

The palace is also an excellent jumping venue.

http://www.patrimonionacional.es/Home/Palacios-Reales/Palacio-Real-de-La-Granja-de-San-Ildefonso.aspx

Sierra de Guadarrama

Now that Spring has finally sprung, all I want to do is be outside.  Madrid has more than its fair share of terrace cafes and bars, outdoor swimming pools and rambling parks, but sometimes there's nothing like getting out of the city.

So we jumped in a hire car and zoomed out to the Sierra de Guadarrama, a stunning mountain range just an hour's drive from Madrid.

A ski resort in winter and a hiker's paradise in summer, the Sierra draws in hoards of day trippers at the weekends.  It was hard to believe that, just an hour away from the 30 degree sunshine in Madrid, we were clambering up snow-topped ridges and skipping over melt-water waterfalls.

The many paths over the mountains and through the woods are marked with different coloured dots on the trees, so you've got to keep your eyes open.

Just as we were thinking it was getting to be time to go home, we realised that we'd been following the wrong colour for quite some time... but with scenery this beautiful, we didn't mind the detour.

Spot the pink dot... no, we didn't either.

We made it into the quaint mountain village of Cercedilla, having missed the last train back to the car park, but just in time for supper at Posada Peña Pintada, a picturesque 19th century mountain lodge which has been lovingly restored by the young couple who own it.  They served us up enormous homemade burgers and chunky fries, and kindly found a friend with a car to drop us back up the mountain to our car.

If you're longing for a break from the city lights, the Sierra de Guadarrama feels like a world away from Madrid.  I'll be back... but with an eye out for those sneaky coloured dots.

http://www.p-pintada.com/