Sunday, March 8, 2009
Got up and got ready in our private room with a mirror and plug-in that actually worked - what a luxury in the hostel world! No breakfast though, so we tried to sneak into the place we stayed yesterday but didn´t have much luck. Good thing we left a bottle of Fanta-type stuff in the fridge because the guy definitely remembered checking us out the day before. Bummer, we really thought it would work! So on our way to Corté Inglés (which was closed, like everything else on a Sunday morning - duh) I gave the bottle to the beggars outside of the chapel since they would have a lot more use for it than us trying to lug around a 2-liter through the Metro, the bus, and then around El Escorial for the day. The lady was so happy and kept calling me guapa as I walked away. I feel bad because we see so many homeless people every day and it´s impossible to give to all of them (or know they´ll use it on practical things). Ok, so then we got to the bus muertas de hambre since we´re used to having a substantial meal right when we wake up so we bought the only breakfast food we could find in the bus station - a pack of chocolate donuts for €2. Totally worth it at that point, especially since I took my vitamin when I woke up and you´re supposed to have it with food - aka my stomach was not pleased with the amount of time it had to wait for the accompanying nourishment. So we jumped on the bus and on our way to El Escorial we passed the Valle de los Caídos again, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_of_the_Fallen and it was just as cool as yesterday! It´s a HUGE marbel cross on the mountain side to honor those who were killed in the civil war. There´s also a big building in front with memorials, an abbey, a basillica, and Franco´s tomb which apparently a bunch of Spaniards want to remove because, well, it doesn´t exactly belong there. I got a couple good pictures which I´m really excited about since we didn´t actually go in. So we got to El Escorial http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Escorial, yet another UNESCO World Heritage Site. It´s an enormous palace that the King of Spain once lived in. In the basement were rooms with the cranes, materials, and blueprints they used to build it - awesome! There was a lot of famous artwork, tombs of the royalty, fresco ceilings, royal beds, and gardens like Versailles. We couldn´t go into the chapel part because it was Sunday morning mass but we could hear the choir singing as we were leaving, how cool! We stopped by a panadería on our way out of town (since we didn´t get the free bread we were banking on this morning and nothing was open when we left) and saw a bunch of cute little cafés and there were lots of people out just enjoying the nice weather. More buses, Metros, and waiting, and about 7 hours later we were back in our apartment where Julia was ready and waiting to cook us a hot meal. We unpacked, ate, showed her our pictures, then crashed!
