Halloween Town

Back to updating you all on my life.

A little over two weeks ago on the luckiest day on the planet, 11.11.11, we took a school trip to a town to the northwest of Madrid called El Escorial. History lesson #5 (#6? I don't remember where we are with these...!) In the middle of the 1500s, King Philip II of Spain built this palace with a multipurpose function. It consists of the royal apartments, a prestigious military school (that our guide compared to the USA's West Point Academy), a basilica, a school (different than the military school, that is used as a high school today!), a convent, and the seat of the Spanish Inquisition. The Inquisition was an institution used to regulate the orthodoxy of the Jewish and Islamic converts to Catholicism after the Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand and Isabel forced the Jews and Muslims out of Spain in 1492. Anyone who had converted who was suspected or accused of retaining any practices of their old faith was detained, tried, tortured and sometimes executed, and all his wealth was confiscated. El Escorial also has some pretty marvelous gardens and serves as the burial ground of almost 400 years worth of Spanish royalty. The kings and queen mothers are buried in their own special crypt directly underneath the high altar of the basilica, in a gorgeously designed, circular, marble room with  huge domed ceiling. Naturally, we weren't allowed to take pictures anywhere inside the building. Really not conducive to my record keeping and blogging adventures!

The bus ride there was also gorgeous. There is a small mountain range to the northwest of Madrid that was perfectly green with the addition of some nice fall oranges (the color, not the fruit for once!) and some picturesque fog and mist. El Escorial is nestled into these mountains and teh damp, cold, misty feel and look of the town made me think that it would be the perfect setting for Halloween. All it needed was some witches, jack-o-lanterns and some of those fake cobwebs.

the roof line of the palace

One half of one side...

The other half

The main courtyard. The last place we were supposed to take pictures..

But I might have snuck a picture of some of the gardens out one of the windows in the palace....

The palace complex

The dome of the basilica

There are pansies everywhere here! Makes me think of Theta every time!  (the black and gold pansy is my sorority's flower)

On Saturday, my friend Meg and I went up to Madrid for the day. She'd been wanting to go the the Reina Sophia (the museum of modern art) and I wanted to go back the the Prado (the older art). We also wanted to see if we could buy tickets to see the Lion King on broadway (in Spanish!) because it is playing in Madrid. We went to the box office first, and did get tickets. We're going this Friday, Dec. 2nd. And then we went across the street to Starbucks and ended up sitting there for two hours, drinking our drinks and people watching out their second floor windows. There is no Starbucks in Toledo. Probably a good thing though.... Eventually we made it down to the museums for a few hours before heading back to Toledo. 

Since this one took used a bit of space with the pictures, I'll write more soon with more adventures! I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend! I love you!