Not all weekends can be filled with snowy slopes, icy crevasses, and striking landscapes. Some are filled with relaxation, culture, near leisure, and rabbits. “Rabbits?” you say. “What about rabbits.”
Supposedly, the name “Hispania” is a Roman alteration of the Carthaginian name “Ispania,” which means “land of rabbits.” (Source: Wikipedia) And it is indeed. There are just rabbits, rabbits, rabbits everywhere all day long. Okay, well not all day, mostly in the mornings and evenings. The place I see most rabbits is in my favorite running location – Casa de Campo.
Casa de Campo is Madrid’s largest park. According to Wikipedia, it is 4,257 acres and five times bigger than Central Park. It was originally the King’s hunting grounds way back in the day, as it is near the Palace just beyond the Puerta del Rey, which would have been the King’s nearest exit through the historically walled city (now, just the gate exists).
It is mostly forested with variations in the vegetation depending on where you are in the park. In some places, there are towering Pinyon Pines, which is where pine nuts come from and which are also scary on windy days. In other areas, it is more of a riparian environment. It is also obscenely full of rabbits.
Since it was a weekend of near leisure, I started my Saturday by relaxing with a coffee and a warm, fuzzy lap cat before heading out on an 8-mile run in Casa de Campo (in the daylight!) that ultimately turned into 9, but not for any particularly exciting reason other than the fact that I was enjoying myself and lost track of the miles.
I love running in Casa de Campo. It has an amazing network of trails that are both official and unofficial and range from hard-packed single track to broad dirt fire roads. The options for running loops are almost endless and it’s a great place to get in a lot of miles without much repetition or boredom, at least for me. As per usual, I saw many rabbits, but I also saw a baby rabbit that moved too quickly for me to take a photo of, which is probably in its best interest in the long run.
This was also the first time I’ve run in the park during daylight hours since the huge snowstorm in January called Filomena. With the light, I could see the extreme damage. Since such snow and ice storms are rare here, a lot of the trees could not handle the weight of the heavy snow and branches and trees collapsed all over the city, including the park.
After the rabbit-filled run, my partner and I headed to the Museo del Romanticism (Museum of Romanticism). The museum is a small palace, styled in the manner of the wealthy during that period. Romanticism was a movement in arts and literature starting in the 18th century that valued strong feelings, imagination, and a return to nature over reason, order, and intellectual ideas (source: Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries).
These types of palace/house-turned-museum are my favorite to visit. I feel like it immerses me in the space and time period. In addition, they are often smaller than a more traditional museum. This is perfect for me, as I find long museum visits fatiguing. I get, what I call “museum back,” which is when my upper back hurts from standing with my arms crossed while contemplating art. I’ll take a tiny taste of art and culture over museum back any day.
I ended my weekend of near leisure with a 5-mile run and a few hill sprints on Sunday in Casa de Campo again. I can’t really run there comfortably during the week, so I try to squeeze it in as much I can on the weekend so I can enjoy the trails, nature, and, also of course, rabbits.
