El Escorial

Today a group of us took a bus to San Lorenzo de El Escorial which is about an hour bus ride away from Madrid. It is a huge monastary in a little town up in the mountains that was built in the 1500s by Felipe II. It used to serve as a home for the kings and queens of Spain as well. Inside the monastary there is a massive basilica, library, musuem of paintings, architecture of the buildings and the Royal Pantheon. We just decided to do a walk through tour ourselves with our little maps and I'd share my knowledge from the first time I visited back when I first came. It was freezing and being inside the stone walls made it even colder. It was hard to walk through while it was colder inside than outside but it was beautiful. They were known for making tiles that are beautifully decorated and it outlined the walls, especially of the sleeping quarters of the Kings and Queens and they had displays of all of the details. They also have a large collection of paintings from the 1500-1600's. There is a massive library that has a painted ceiling that makes the room sparkle with gold. The views look over the countryside and it's back faces the mountains where the Valle de los Caidos, the grave of Franco, is located as well. We wanted to visit but unfortunately it was closed today because of restoration. I'd been there before but it was still a dissappointment that it wasn't open. We spent a few hours walking through the monastary and it felt like it just kept going forever. They had some of the rooms where the king and queens used to live and it was cool to get an idea what their beds looked like and sleeping chambers. It was used more as a summer residence which makes sense because it was so cold inside the stone walls. Around the outside of the monastary were beautiful gardens that looked like huge mazes.

In the bottom of the monastary is the Royal Pantheon where the royalty of both of the dynasties of Spain, the Bourbans and Habsburg families. One side has the Kings and Queens but for some reason you need a special pass to visit that or have a guided tour, which we didn't but I really wanted to see it again so I tried to play dumb like I didn't understand the security guard but no success, he ran after me. Oops. But the other side has a lot of the children and cousins that were still relatives but not quite as important. A lot of the children would die young and their graves were located there. Both of the dynasties have their families buried here.

After our visit we had a nice long Spanish lunch, well my friends ate it because it was meat and I had packed a PB and J on a delicious baugette of course. But, it was a menu del dia which gives you a 3 course meal for a very reasonable price. If everything didn't have meat I would of enjoyed some soup. After that we took time to walk around the city a little, which is full of cobble stone streets and hilly passages. It is an other city where it's beautiful to enjoy the old feeling of history of Spain.

This week I was able to go for a run for the first time since I've been here and it was great. We live right by the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and they have a bike path that leads to a mountainous park that I ran up. It leads to a view of all of Madrid and although it was a little overcast on a clear day it'll be beautiful. It also has lots of subpaths and I'm excited to explore. I was happy to find some place close and had to run bundled up but it was worth it.

They don't eat peanut butter here but of course it was the one thing I've really been craving so I had to splurge and buy a bottle at the one store they sell them at, El Corte Ingles, which has everything and it's definitly worth the investment. Eating here is still a challenge, but I'm finding little tricks to find things I like, such as now PB and Js. Feels just like middle school again :)

We've also been planning trips for this semester and so far have Cadiz, Spain, Paris, Germany, and Amsterdam...more to come :)