More Madrid

I also finally got to go to El Escorial. Though Madrid has a royal palace, El Escorial is better known as the grand home of Spanish royals during the Renaissance period. It is about an hour's train/bus ride from Madrid and is a great day trip. I tried to go very early in the semester, but it was closed (I found that out at the front door) and the second time it was closed again (I found that out before I left Madrid that morning).

Robert, Kesh, and I went with a group of students from Vanderbilt to El Escorial while Elise was traveling with her sister. It's always fun to see a palace or castle (this place is a combination of the two...old Spanish architecture but gorgeous gardens and grand rooms), but the best part was that El Escorial is like an art museum, displaying just a fraction of the giant collection of the Spanish royals...complete with works by Titian, El Greco, Velazquez, and other immortals. Really cool to see.

After lunch, we took another bus to El Valle de los Caidos (the valley of the fallen). This place was important and interesting for two reasons -- it is a giant memorial/monument to the soldiers who died in the Spanish Civil War (early 20th century) and it is also the tomb of Francisco Franco. Franco was a fascist dictator who took power of Spain in the 1930s and held it until the 1970s. Though he kept Spain technically out of World War II, Franco also was a buddy of Hitler and let Germany bomb Spanish towns here and there. Though his policies were responsible for boosting the Spanish economy in the 1950s, he also really set Spain back technologically and socially...some of those affects are still seen today...it is only in the last 20 years that Spain is really catching up with the rest of the world. El Valle was really cool...great views in the hills of Spain...a giant cross on top of one hill with a tunnel-like church built into the hill. It is a very creepy church...it is very long and cold and looks like a missile silo. Still, it was interesting with its tapestries of the Apocalypse and the tomb of Franco. Very interesting and worthwhile day.

A bit more to come on Madrid in the next post...