Sleepless in Madrid: El Escorial

Have you ever walked through a narrow, dark hallway with portraits that seem to be staring at you, antiquated rugs, once-inhabited royal chambers that today only have empty views of the misty forests below, and ended up in a beautiful, yet overbearing, crypt alone? It can be a chilling (literally) but interesting experience. Well that's exactly what I experienced in one of Spain's historical royal residencies last month.

The main entrance to El Escorial

This December Laura, Danielle and I went to San Lorenzo, a little town outside of Madrid that boasts El Escorial, the historical Spanish Royal Residence that was built as a monastery and also a palace, library, sepulchre, and museum. I had heard good things about it and that it was worth visiting, but I just never made it last year- even though it's only 20 miles from the town I teach in! So we finally took a trip out there this winter so we could also see San Lorenzo's Christmas Nativity scene that the town puts up every December.

Since El Escorial closed early, and since the other girls had already been, I was left to explore the royal site by myself. Though I was a little bummed at first, it turned out to be an interesting experience alone, and it gave me the flexibility to tour the building at my own pace. Which is good because it ended up being a lengthy tour - the place is huge! I began following the arrow signs that guide you throughout the buildings, and was first led to an architectural museum. It was a neat exhibit that showed the original plans and old construction techniques from the 16th century. It was cool to see models of the constructions methods and try to figure out how the various pullies and wheels worked together!

View of the gardens and the foggy mountains in the distance
from the window of the main palace salon.

Next I began to wander through some of the many rooms of the old palace, rooms which were once salons, guest rooms, dining rooms, sitting rooms, etc. There were many beautiful, colorful Italian-style paintings from artists who were contracted by King Philip II and became popular through his positive favor of them. The rest of these collections are in the famous El Prado museum in Madrid, and the quality and historical beauty of the paintings is incredible. I felt like I was looking at my middle school world history textbooks again, but in real life! Besides the paintings, there were beautiful ceiling frescoes. Some of the rooms, like the bedrooms, have furniture still, but mostly the rooms are quite empty, which gave it an eery feel. It also didn't help that as it was usually just me, a security guard, and the occasional visitor, walking through the rooms. There was a point where it was just me getting slightly lost in the narrow, cold stone hallways and feeling a little panicky!

After some more wandering I finally made it to the sepulchre, where most of Spain's royalty is buried, which was the main reason I had come to visit the building. It was deep down in the palace, and to get there you had to first climb down a flight of thick carpeted stairs with dark, wood paneled walls, a dark green ceiling, hanging chandeliers made of fancy glass beads, and mounted lamps on the side walls. As I was walking down the stairs, I felt a sense of excitement, as I knew I was approaching the famous pantheon, burial place of many famous Kinds and Queens of Spain. Plus, I felt like I had been transported straight to the haunted mansion in Disneyland!

The Pantheon of El Escorial, where most of Spain's Royalty from the Habsburg and Bourbon dynasties (from Charles I to the present) are buried. (Photo credit: Wikipedia- since the public isn't allowed to take photographs!)

After descending the lavish, dark entrance, I entered the sepulchre to find an even more lavish space- one fit for royalty. It was a circular room full of rows of stacked tombs made of dark green and black marble. They were also adorned with so much gold decorations that it felt like there was gold everywhere! It was really an impressively morbid space, unlike anything I'd ever seen before! I spent at least 15 minutes there just absorbing the room and reading the golden nameplates on the tombs. One was for Queen Eugene of England, who I had just finished reading a historical fiction novel about! It was so neat to have learned her story, how she married the Spanish King and was exiled during the time of Franco, and then see her resting place in person a couple of weeks later!

I left El Escorial satisfied with my visit, and also very happy to be going back to the spacious outdoors with its fresh winter air! By the time I exited the day had become a misty, cold evening, and the winter mist gave a gorgeous touch to austerity of the stone building. There were many families taking advantage of their holiday weekend off, with little Spanish kids were running around in puffy coats :) As I walked to meet up with Danielle and Laura, I even ran into one of my students from school! This didn't surprise me though, as it was a holiday weekend and San Lorenzo is really close to the town that I teach in.

Then Laura, Danielle and I explored the little town of San Lorenzo and it's giant, life-sized nativity scene. The town was super cute, with sparkly Christmas lights hanging on the trees and some of the palm trees wrapped in lights. The nativity scene was very elaborate, with giant elephants, giraffes, and other exotic animals, markets with life-sized, paper-mache people selling vegetables and spices, stalls of horses and pigs, and running windmills with flowing water! It was so much fun for us that I could imagine it would be even more magical for the little Spanish kids and families visiting it as well! It was obviously a huge project done by adults as well, but the paper-mache gave it a kid-made effect!

Then I was soo starving that we had to find a restaurant stat! We went into a cute little bar to get some tapas and beer. We got tostadas, a typical tapa here, which is a toasted slice of baguette with cheese or meet on top. We got tostadas with goat cheese and marmelade, yummm, and tortilla española. It was cheap, in generous portions, and the owner/bartender was a sweet old Spanish man. Just your typical great bar experience! Plus, anytime you're really hungry, everything tastes twice as good. As the Spanish saying goes, "El hambre es la mejor salsa" (hunger is the best sauce/seasoning!).

We had passed a couple of churro stands earlier, and couldn't leave without getting a nice, hot fried churro! So we joined the long line to get a typical Madrileño dessert. Then we sat on a bench in the chilly night air, in this quaint little town, surrounded by Spanish families, Christmas lights, and the smell of churros and sounds of laughter in the air, with the impressive stone El Escorial palace below. It was an amazing place to be, and one of those moments that made me say out loud to the girls "Sometimes I still can't believe we're living in Spain!! We're so lucky!". And I sunk my teeth into the thick churro again :)