El Escorial

The royal cathedral that also housed the royal family for a few months out of the year in the autumn is a magnificent place with a lot of history and art.  When H and I arrived into the city, which is nestled at the foot of the mountains about forty minutes outside of Madrid, the grounds of El Esocrial take up a huge amount of land, and that's not including the gardens and old orchards.  It looks a little bland and plain on the outside, but there's a lot to see inside.

Sadly, for a lot of the inside stuff, they weren't allowing photography.  This always irks me, considering photos are part of how I remember places.  But word painting will have to be enough for today.

We saw a number of paintings by famous Spanish and Flemish painters of the olden times (because Spain had apparently conquered Finland many years ago).  But the most interesting stretch of paint by far wasn't a painting, but an entire hall with walls covered.  It's called the Hall of Battles, and depicts every major Spanish war up to their independence from France.  It's also huge.  It probably took years to complete.

We also saw the sections where the King and Queen lived.  Each had a wing on opposite ends of the buildings (almost as if they didn`t like each other very much!) that were pretty much identical, consisting of a sitting room, an office and a bedroom.  They were actually pretty small, but considering this was only where they lived for a few months, it makes sense.  A special feature of both bedrooms was the fact that they looked out into the church, so that the royals could attend mass without leaving bed.  This was especially important to Philpe, who was ill for much of his later years.

I think the king`s area was a lot cooler than the queen`s.  We saw the chair that the sickly Philpe was carried in, which had footrests and was the first one of its kind to recline.  The king also had a couple interesting clocks - the first was actually more of a sundial, with a slit carved into the ceiling that would allow a ray of light to shine upon a line on the floor with the symbols of planets on it to tell the time.  The second was a lantern clock, so that the king could still tell the time even at night when it was dark out.  That`s something I definitely would have wanted before glowing wristwatches.  There were also a lot of really neat old maps in the king`s area, most of which outlined Europe pretty well, but a lot of the rest of the world was pretty skewed from the exploration of the time.  North American looks a little different in reality!

The pantheon was another fascinating piece of royal treatment.  Twelve kings and queens of Spain are kept in the basement, and as you go down the stairs, the walls and floors change from normal stone to polished marble.  Very fancy, especially for the time.  The entire room where the skeletons are literally kept is made of marble and decorated with flecks of gold and jade.  There are only two spots left in the pantheon, and those are for the mother and father of the current king.  I´m not sure what the current king is planning to do for his burial.

Back upstairs, the only female ruler, Queen Isabella, had a number of less elaborate crypts made for the prince and princesses.  They stretch on for quite a ways, separated by families aside from the infants, who are together in graves that H mentioned looked like a giant layer cake.  I unfortunately couldn´t disagree.

There are a couple of courtyards inside surrounding the basillica, which has a huge and beautiful interior.  H related how one of his friends got married inside (apparently he knew the mayor) and that there was a huge waiting list for anyone who wanted to be married inside.  I suggested that some people might reserve the place and set the date before they meet their betrothed!

La Cueva

Saving the best for last, we visited the library, which reportedly houses over 40,000 books.  H was doubtful of that number as we walked through, though I pointed out that there were other layers of books behind the books too.  I`m a little doubtful too, but there were a large number and they were all of the super old but handwritten quality that marks books of that time.  Beautiful lettering and colors came from the books that were open, though the others could use a bit of dusting.  There was also a large gold Ptolemaic model of the solar system inside, which is something I think every grand library should have.  Though maybe the Copernican would be better in this day and age.  ;)  I also loved the ceiling, which had images of all sorts of learnings such as philosophy, astronomy, literature, etc, along with images of famous people associated with them.

After the inside visit, we went out into the gardens to explore the maze-like hedges (which aren`t actually grown so that you can wander in them, they`re just designed to look twisty and confusing) which little children kept jumping out of.  After all that walking, we´d worked up quite an appetite, and walked into the main town to a traditional Spanish restaurant H had been to a couple times before with his friends, La Cueva.  Under H´s recommendations, we had some Spanish sausage and tortilla (which is eggs and potato, remember, not a mexican tortilla) as well as wine, sangria, bread and cheese.  It was a filling meal, and I ended up meeting two groups of H´s friends from the area who separately came in to eat while we were there.  Popular place with the locals!