How to check the ripeness of an avocado

 At Aeon Queensbay, I discovered that they have an avocado ripeness checker.

When I arrived, someone was trying it out with an avocado that was still quite firm (just above the bottom category).

Another group arrived just as that person was leaving. I was waiting to take a photo, and I snapped the photo after a lady in the group tested an avocado.

The situation was actually quite funny. Another group had arrived behind me, also interested in the new contraption. After the lady tested the avocado, all of us were looking around at each other and smiling/laughing, and a guy in the first group (noticing the new arrivals) said, “Okay, let me show you how it works!”, and proceeded to pick up another avocado and demonstrate the whole process, complete with an explanation of the result. 

I didn’t try out the checker myself, because I decided to leave that second group to it, and when I circled back later, yet another person was trying it out, and I decided it was not important enough to wait for.

Anyway, another thing that I discovered in Queensbay was this.

Notice anything?

I was just walking past when I caught sight of the mini watch in the display. I stopped to take a look. At first I thought it was a cute miniature. Then I realized it could probably be worn on the finger.

An employee of the store came out and confirmed for me that it was a ring watch. I haven’t seen anyone wearing a ring watch before…have I just not been observant enough, or are ring watches not that popular?

The bear and the strawberry tree

In the last post, we visited several iconic landmarks of Madrid. In this post, we will visit the most iconic of them all, el Oso y el Madroño (the Bear and the Strawberry Tree). It is situated at Puerta del Sol, a rather large and very central square in Madrid.

My mother read somewhere that this statue is such a tourist attraction that there was no hour of the day that there was no one taking a photo with it.

We actually took the train/metro (I can’t remember which) to this square from the airport. At that time, we were in a hurry to check in to our hotel (and then go to the Temple of Debod), so we didn’t take time to look around. But I remember spotting the statue and there were definitely people around it.

This time, when we were actually visiting the square, it was no different. I managed to snap a photo as a tourist walked away from the statue after their photo, and before the next person walked to it. 

my mother quickly went for a photo

I gave up on waiting for an actual photo, and decided to just take a selfie

The next day I was attending the Minesweeper World Championships, which lasted the whole day, so I managed to verify the claim that there was always someone around the statue.

7:30am

11:20pm, managed to take a photo of the other side of the statue

It isn't surprising that there are lots of people around late on a Saturday night! On both Saturday and Sunday morning, there were workers cleaning the road outside of our hotel. So much trash from their night-time partying...

On our last day, I snapped another photo of the bear as we returned to our hotel in the afternoon to get our things and go to the airport. This time it was because there was a bird perched on the statue!

the bird almost looks like part of the statue!

So yep, we never saw the statue with no one around it...

Anyway, Puerta del Sol is a large square that has more than just a bear statue and a metro/train station.

horse statue

one of the metro exits was transformed into a countdown to the Formula 1 race (in almost a year!)

this is a government office that somehow seems to be under renovation

And in front of it, a lot of people who were interested in this "Km. 0" on the ground!

This is supposedly the dead center of Madrid, so there is this marker of "0km from the center" and with directions to different places. I would have liked to take photos all around the circle, but there were too many people around; I gave up.

And there is a "superstition" that if we put our foot there, we would one day return to Madrid. Both my mother and I did that...so let's see when we return there!

A few iconic Madrid landmarks

After leaving the El Retiro park, we visited a few nearby places on the way back to the hotel.

This is the Puerta de Alcalá (Alcala Gate). It is situated in the middle on a roundabout, so it was hard to take photos of it.

one of the sides

If we look closely, we can see bullet holes in its walls from a previous war.

We didn't walk to all the sides; the roundabout was big! However I managed to snap a couple of photos of the other side, from the Bolt car that we were taking to the airport on our last day.

the only photo I have where we can see the top of the other side...so who cares if there's a van blocking the view? :P

Then there is this other roundabout, which has the Fuente de Cibeles (Cibeles fountain) in the middle.

zoom in

The photos above were taken in the morning, when we were on our way to the park. It has better lighting than the one we took on the way back, below.

the back of the chariot

This is Plaza de Cibeles, and beside it is the Madrid City Hall (Ayuntamiento de Madrid).

front view of the city hall

a view from the side, to be able to take more of it in

selfie because it was kinda the perfect place, with shade and not too dark

some buildings surrounding the roundabout (the Cibeles fountain is on the right of the photo)

Then after we crossed the road(s) to the building on the left, we can turn back and take a photo of the city hall.

blocked by traffic lights and/or lamp posts...this is why I don't have a photo of the whole building!

I would just like to mention that we did walk along Paseo del Prado (Prado Boulevard, which is rather famous) before going to El Retiro. The boulevard is to the right of the photo above; we crossed it both going to and from the park.

This is the Museo del Prado which is situated on the boulevard (a museum so of course we didn’t enter :P ).

Next we went to Puerta del Sol near our hotel. That'll be for another post!

Ponds and statues of El Retiro

After visiting the rose garden in El Retiro, we wanted to see the Crystal Palace (Palacio de Cristal), but sadly it was being renovated. The pond beside it was pretty, though.

some fountain that we walked past

Then we came to the biggest body of water in the park, appropriately named Estanque Grande del Retiro (estanque grande meaning "large pond").

see how big it is...

And then we zoom in bit by bit. :P

plenty of these mandarin ducks around

 We walked over to the left side of the pond (from where we approached). There was this large harp sitting on a bench. I guess its owner went away for a while...

taking a photo from this side of the pond

zoomed out

We had come in to the park from the south-west, walking east till we reached the rose garden. Then we went north to the Crystal Palace and then this great pond. Now we walked west away from the pond, through a path of statues (Paseo de las Estatuas) towards one of the exits.

a photo from a slightly higher angle, to be able to see the shape of the hedges

the gate

This is one of the more famous gates to the park, called the Spain Gate. We weren't the only ones taking photos there!

just adding one more photo to show the lovely flower bush on both sides of the gate

That's all for this park! If we had had extra time with nothing to do, this could have been a repeat destination, because there was still so much of the park that we hadn't seen. But we had seen the main things, so it wasn't a priority. And we did find enough things to do in the upcoming days.

Roses in El Retiro

El Retiro is a huge park not far from our hotel. It would be impossible to visit every part of the park in a day, though we did cover quite a bit of ground.

This is the first interesting item we spotted in the park, though we had no idea what it was. 

It was actually moving, so I took some videos.

This is the other side of the wheel:

I found out from Google Maps that this is called La Noria del Huerto del Francés.

Someone wrote this in a Google review: 

Originally, the Ferris wheel was built here to pump water from underground to supply the large amount of water for the porcelain factory. The porcelain factory operated for about half a century until the War of Independence. Later, the French army, preparing to occupy Madrid, realized that the Retiro Park was the best place to set up camp and established it as one of the barracks of Napoleon's army and an observation point for the city. This is why the Retiro Ferris Wheel is called the Ferris Wheel of the French Garden today.
In 1812, the life of the porcelain factory ended. The Anglo-Spanish army commanded by Wellington bombed all the facilities in the vicinity with the goal of liberating Madrid. The building was completely destroyed, and only the remains of the Ferris wheel and other structures remained under the rubble.
It is said that this was to prevent the French army from regrouping again.
In the excavations conducted between 1996 and 2000, in addition to the Ferris wheel, facilities such as a swimming pool and a sedimentation basin were discovered, and in 2020, it was restored to its current appearance according to the original design.

And this is the Fountain of the Fallen Angel (Fuente del Ángel Caído).

And then we discovered a rose garden. It was rather hidden; a hedge surrounded it, and we wouldn't see any roses if we didn't go inside.

in the middle of the rose garden

a symmetrical view

 happy mother with roses

plenty of colours

still happy

Since there are still quite some photos from the park (I did say it was huge), I shall keep the rest for the next post!