The lesser-known bear and strawberry tree

After leaving Madrid Rio Park, we made our way back towards the center of Madrid, to see a few more places.

This is Plaza de la Villa.

statue of Don Álvaro de Bazán

one of the flower bushes that you can see in the first pic

As we were leaving the square, we suddenly spotted El Oso y el Madroño on the ground!

My mother had read about this somewhere. She said it was on the street leading from the palace to Sol (the square where the actual bear statue is, remember?)

looking down at the bear

this bear is a lot less popular; passersby seemed curious about what we were taking photos of :P

after I did the squatting-down selfie, my mother wanted the same pose :P

I looked up this street so that I can check back where to find it again in future. It is on Calle Mayor, right next to Plaza de la Villa.

Iglesia Catedral de las Fuerzas Armadas (Cathedral Church of the Armed Forces)

This is just a small church that we stumbled upon, so I just snapped a pic.

Then we reached Catedral de Santa María la Real de la Almudena. It is beside the Royal Palace of Madrid, which we saw on our first day. But we missed this cathedral because it was at the far end of the road. (and we were looking for dinner...)

cathedral on the left, palace on the right (neither of which you can see in this photo :P )

Besides the bear in the photo above, Stitch was on the square too!

the front of the cathedral

overall view of the cathedral

Opposite the cathedral, there were steel bars around the palace grounds. I snapped a few photos through the bars.

zoomed in (or maybe the photo earlier was zoomed out)

Then we went to the end of the square, where there was a nice view.

The photos above capture the vista from left to right. I actually took a panoramic photo as well, but I feel that it doesn't look as nice, because these individual pictures zoom in to capture better angles.

After that, we had lunch and then went back to our hotel to collect our things and leave for the airport. So that's all the sightseeing in Madrid! In upcoming posts, I shall share the food that we ate there (which I have mostly skipped in these sightseeing posts).