Excursions
Madrid
Madrid offers countless places to visit and places to enjoy. One of the reasons why we travel there is the significant number of tourist attractions in this beautiful city. The recreational environments create a perfect cultural and leisure balance. During 4 intense days, some of the most outstanding visits that we usually do are:
- Musical of the Lion King. Produced by Stage Entertainment, El Rey León is the largest musical production ever performed in Spain. Suitable for the whole family, it is a unique experience that captivates from start to finish and that, as more than 5 million viewers have already done in Madrid, you have to live at least once in your life. For its spectacular nature, for its beauty, for the emotion it is capable of transmitting… Parque Warner Bros Madrid. Space for leisure and fun, it is one of the most complete and avant-garde theme parks in Europe. Its 700,000 m2 are divided into five large thematic areas: Hollywood Boulevard, Warner Bros. Studios, DC SuperHeroes World, Old West and Cartoon Village. It houses 41 attractions distributed by each of these areas, as well as Parque Warner Beach, some of which are unique in the world. Every day, 58 performances of 18 different shows, parades and animations take place, which will make you enjoy an unforgettable day in a unique space. It also has a wide and varied offer of restaurants and ten themed shops. Wax Museum. It currently has more than 450 figures, some of which have the peculiarity of wearing the real clothes of each of the characters, or their sports equipment. You can see stars from the big screen such as Leonardo di Caprio, Antonio Banderas and Brad Pitt; horror movie characters like Freddy Krueger, Frankenstein or Dracula; or historical figures such as Napoleon, Cleopatra or Carlos V. The museum has some additional attractions such as the Train of Terror, which offers visitors a peculiar ride in which they can enjoy a curious mixture of animated figures that include rats, dinosaurs , sharks, aliens or characters from Star Wars. The museum also includes the virtual trip that takes place aboard a simulator, as well as a walk through the history of Spain through a 3D movie Faunia. It is a nature theme park located in Madrid, which offers the perfect combination between a natural ecosystem and a traditional zoo. There you will find more than 700 animal species and more than 1,000 different plant species. The most striking thing about the park is that it allows you to interact with animals, such as sea bears, manatees, pelicans and penguins. The bravest will also be able to feed the Faunia crocodiles. Retirement park. It is the most important park in Madrid and one of the favorite places for both locals and tourists. It is a large 118 hectare green space in the heart of the city. It has hundreds of places to visit and activities to enjoy: puppet shows, musicians, hand readers, fortune tellers and seers are some of the usual distractions. The artificial pond is one of the first images that we will see if we enter through the Puerta de Alcalá. Madrid's royal palace. It is the largest in Western Europe and one of the largest in the world. Its more than 135,000 square meters and 3,418 rooms have witnessed centuries of Spanish history. It is one of the few official residences for Heads of State that is open to the public. Almost 2 million visitors come every year to discover its corners, its works of art and its unique treasures in the world, the official residence of the Spanish Royal Family. It is used exclusively for receptions, ceremonies and official events. It is surrounded by the Campo del Moro gardens and the Sabatini gardens. It can be enjoyed by visiting the Official Rooms, the Royal Armory, the Royal Pharmacy. Madrid Amusement Park. It was the first amusement park that existed in the city. More than thirty attractions are complemented with shows, hobbies, gastronomy to balance a global leisure offer in the twenty hectares of the Park. It is divided into 5 zones (Zone of Machinism, Zone of Tranquility, Zone of Nature, Children's Zone and Gran Avenida). Forest Park. Located in the Madrid town of Guadarrama, it offers a wide range of leisure and sport activities for all audiences in the middle of nature: more than 100 high-altitude games and 12 zip lines capable of testing your skills and emotions at all times. It is the only adventure park in all of Madrid that has zip lines over a lake. It also has the longest zip line in all of Spain between trees, 380 meters long that runs through different places and allows you to contemplate the Las Pinillas reservoir from fifty meters high.
Cantabria
As its tourism slogan says: Cantabria is infinite. It is impossible to gather in a single article all the wonderful corners that the Cantabrian community hides. But here we leave you some of our great moments of the 4 days that our visit lasts:
- Visit to Santillana del Mar. Declared as a Historic-Artistic Site, it is popularly known as the town of the three lies: it is neither holy, nor flat, nor does it have a sea. In addition to walking the cobbled streets of the historic center with its traditional houses full of flowers and palaces, the Collegiate Church of Santa Juliana and the Merino and Don Borja towers are a must. We get to know this town through a "gymkana", where people show us their kindness by answering all our questions and offering us tastings of typical products such as quesadas and sobaos, accompanied by a glass of pure cow's milk, freshly milked and boiled. (Yes, from that milk that leaves a white mustache ...). Visit to the Cueva del Soplao. One of the coolest visitable caves in the country. It was discovered at the beginning of the 20th century thanks to the exploitation of the mines in La Florida. This cavity keeps in its interior a geological treasure formed by stalactites, stalagmites and, which makes it more special than others, by beautiful eccentric formations. The conventional guided tour is very simple, it combines a train tour and a walking tour in about an hour. Visit to the Cabárceno Nature Park. Space naturalized by the hand of man, based on the primitive beauty of the karst landscape, on the 750 ha of an old open-pit mining operation. It is home to almost 120 animal species from the five continents that live in semi-freedom, distributed in large areas where one or more species coexist. Life develops in the most natural environment possible for the animals that inhabit it. Except for the food that is provided, the rest of the activities are marked by their almost total freedom and instinct. With more than 20 km of roads, it is designed for educational, cultural, scientific and recreational purposes. You can enjoy shows such as the flight of birds of prey, or the skills of sea lions. Multiadventure Park, hanging bridges and zip lines. Taking advantage of the facilities offered by the hostel, we enjoyed a high-altitude circuit through the hanging bridges that go from tree to tree, to end up sliding down one of the park's zip lines. We will also test our climbing skills in the climbing wall, we will take a swim in the pool, play a game of laser-tag or visit the farm animals. Visit to the Altamira Cave. It is a natural cavity in the rock in which one of the most important pictorial and artistic cycles of prehistory is preserved. It is part of the Altamira Cave and Paleolithic Rock Art complex of the Cantabrian Coast, declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco. It was in 1868 and 1879 when engravings of Homo Sapiens were found, corresponding to the Magdalenian Upper Palaeolithic and a smaller number from the Solutrean, but due to their deterioration, access was restricted, and the new installations of the Altamira Museum and the Neocueva, a reliable and meticulous replica of the original. The Altamira cave is not open to your visit, you do visit the replica, the Neo-cave, located a few meters from the original cavity.