El Escorial on a Rainy Day

Tuesday, March 03, 2009 Madrid Spain
Monday evening, after a homemade dinner with salad and noodles, using the kitchen here at the hostel, we went upstairs and to our surprise found that we could get the internet in our room. Not nearly as warm as the lounge, but a whole lot quieter. We ended up with 2 new room mates last night…. A girl from Argentina and an unknown person who came in very late and left while we were gone today. After breakfast Tuesday morning we put on our rain ponchos with plastic bags over our socks because of wearing sandals. We made our way to the nearest Metro entry and Martha, finding a vending machine that had an option for English, purchased our tickets for the Bus Station. We had to change metro lines only once before finding the bus station where we purchased our next tickets from the driver on the bus to visit “The Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial”
El Escorial is about 30 miles North of Madrid and is known as the place that the Great Spanish Inquisition started during the 1500’s. ….this led to the downfall of Spain being a world leader. The monastery was turned into a summer Palace of Philip II 1563-1584 and houses tombs from 4 centuries of Spanish Royalty. We saw many great paintings brought to El Escorial by the Royal Families. Two important ones were “Calvery” by Van de Weyden and “Martyrdom of St. Maurice” by El Greco. Martha is so good with her knowledge of the world of art… she has really listened to her husband, Jim during their travels and is now sharing all this information with me. As I’ve said before, she makes a great tour guide and is good about getting me to go when sometimes I have second thoughts about doing something… But today I finally said NO… She wanted us to wait another hour and then visit the Valley of the Fallen (A memorial to all who died in the Spanish Civil War and where Franco is buried) Am sure it would have been great to see but I was so cold from the weather that all I wanted was to get back to the hostel and some warm dry socks. On the bus ride to El Escorial so many people had colds that we used our face mask on that trip… after that and getting so chilled it was time for the Airborne when we got back to our home away from home.
Talked with Phil on skype right after we got back… we had a good connection for the first time and not to many people in the lounge so it was good to talk with him. He asked me if I was homesick yet…the answer…NO… I miss him and everyone at home but am having such fun sharing time with Martha… It’s fun having conversations with all the new people we are meeting, a stranger on the metro who was reading an Engineering Report in English, Martha could not believe that I was talking with someone on the Metro..she said it was a photo op but didn’t think it such a good ideal as the metro was so crowded at that time of the day. At the bus station in San Lorenzo we met a nice fellow who helped us with bus information and was from Ireland, working in Japan, and here on holiday.
Of course we have a lot of fun with all the young people at our hostel who are always interested in us because of our age and they see us using our computers….. well think that I will close now and post this for today.