We debated what to do on our last day in Madrid. We originally had thought about doing a short day trip outside the city, but after a couple long day trips and knowing the next day we'd have a very long travel day, we opted to stay in the city.

It was the coldest and windiest day of our trip, but we still hoped to get outside, hit up some of our favorite playgrounds and try to make it an active day.

We talked over to a playground in front of the Royal Palace and were surprised to see it roped off. Puzzled, we walked about 10 minutes to one of the other playgrounds. It was also roped off.

We couldn't figure out quite what was going on, but we backtracked one more time to a playground we'd passed on the walk. It was smaller and didn't have much equipment, but it wasn't closed. It also wasn't very exciting for our kiddo, so after ten minutes, we hopped a city bus to take us back to Retiro Park.

Even though all the playgrounds were closed there too, we at least had lots of wide open space to run explore and run around.

I was curious about the playground closure thing and tried to find an answer. Reddit told me that sometimes the city closes the playgrounds in certain weather conditions so tree branches don't fall on kids. I don't know how true that is, but it's the only thing close to an answer I found.

The highlight was for sure getting to pet the police horses patrolling near the lake.

Or maybe it was chasing more pigeons. We did a lot of that too.

We also got to see a pretty rose garden that we hadn't made it to the day before, and I was surprised for late November, how many flowers were still in bloom.

After burning off some energy, we left the park to do one last daytime stroll through the city, admiring the Christmas decorations and stopping for some more churros.

We ended the day with dinner at our friends' house, a perfectly fitting way to wrap up a great trip. I'm so glad we got the chance to visit them and spend time exploring Madrid and some of the surrounding areas.