Today we left our hotel at 10 AM to visit el Escorial, a ministery/school/royal palace about an hour North West of Madrid. Though not used as a royal palace now, it still houses the bodies of many of the past kings of Spain. Even the father of the current king is in the tomb and when Juan Carlos dies, he will be buried there with his wife as well. We only saw a few of the rooms, but the majority of the monastery is occupied by nuns and monks. There is a part for a school and we accidentally went in that way instead of the real entrance, which was on a different side. They had very old paintings, but the paintings we saw yesterday were more interesting, but that was an art museum. We did see the chair that King Charles made his servants carry when he was ill and needed to travel back and forth between Madrid and Escorial.
After we left el Escorial, we went to la Plaza de España. Here they had a statue made to honor Cervantes, the author of
Don Quixote and other plays and novels. It depicts him sitting about halfway up the obelisk and right below him are Don Quixote and Pancho riding their horse or
burro, donkey, respectfully. They also had this large fountain that was closer to
Gran Via, large or popular street. We walked down Gran Via and looked at all of the shops that they had. We took a detour and found a supermarket/clothes store called
El Corte Inglés. They had 6 floors of clothes and games and food and then a food court on the seventh floor.
Today will be our last day in Madrid, and tomorrow we are visiting Toledo and then arriving in Granada at 8 PM tomorrow night. Most of the day will be traveling since we will be spending six and a half hours on the bus. That should be fun, but Madrid, it's been fun :)
This is the view in panorama from the 7th floor of the hotel.
No comments:
Post a Comment