So guess what. The time change happened here already. It happened last night at 3am back to 2am. That is good for the fact it was light out much earlier but it is bad for the fact I get to do it twice because the US happens next weekend. Bleh. In any event, I woke up and got cleaned up and headed to the Dunkin Coffee (it is not Dunkin Donuts here for some reason) across the street from the tourist place. I had a coffee and a chocolate donut which I forgot to take a picture of then headed over to the office to check in for the tour. Today was the monastery of El Escorial. The tour was actually a combination of 2 tour groups. Those just going to El Escorial like I was an then a lot of people who were going to do a Toledo tour in the second half of the day.
The drive was about 40 minutes out of town back towards the mountains. El Escorial is a 16th century monastery built by Phillip II. The idea was it was going to be a tomb first but I guess he decided along the way it could be more than that and he built up a monastery, cathedral and residence in the location. In its time there was no supporting town because the king wanted his privacy so everyone was kept far away. The theme of the monastery was St Laurent who was tortured by being cooked on a grill as a martyr so the there is a theme of looking like a grill that is present in the monastery. The building is quite large and unfortunately no where in the tour did we get a good place to take a picture of the whole edifice. I would have liked that opportunity. On the outside I suppose it is the size that is really what is impressive about it. It has the look of a very large French style palace but without any adornments or at least very little. In that sense I guess it is not picturesque.
Because it was Sunday the tour started in the Library while they had services in the Cathedral. Apparently it is still an active library for the monastery which is still active with Augustinian brothers. The books are kept spine to the back so that the pages have more ability to breath. They do not get much humidity so the books are well protected. The entirety of the monastery's decorations inside are Italian in style. Unfortunately there were no pictures allowed and I didn't get a chance to find a good book of the site so I will have to go without. The inside did remind me of a lot that I saw in Rome and was very much distant from the dark lesser adorned cathedrals I had seen so far in Spain.
I was apparently the only person in the tour who required English which made things a touch difficult at first because I think the guide wanted to dispense with a bilingual tour but I ended up meeting Inez and Jessie who are both from Florida and they helped translate for me a lot of what he said that he didn't translate himself. Jessie apparently owns her own translation business and Inez works for her. They were very nice and very helpful and I had a lot of fun talking to them for the remainder of the tour. The tour moved on from the library to the cathedral which did remind me of the cathedrals I had seen in Italy and was much more bright and agreeable looking. The residence of Phillip II and his wife were built just off the church and we visited those next. From there we wound our way through their residential and show areas and then finally back out to a small cafeteria for a few minutes where we had coffee then on to the tour bus and back to Madrid by say 1:30. The tour was basically more interesting than this telling but without pictures it is probably not as good a story. I did like the place. Apparently a support town has been built in recent centuries and approximately 10000 or so people live in the vicinity.
After we returned to Madrid I ended up eating lunch with Inez and Jessie and we chatted until they had to move on the second part of their tour in Toledo. I obviously hadn't signed on for that as I had already done the full day tour in Toledo. We ate at a small tapas, cafeteria type place and had their menu of the day. For me I had their black rice (which is black by way of squid ink) and their roasted lamb chops. The rice was excellent and very tasty. The lamb was good but very fatty. They included a bottle of wine for us and we had an inlcuded dessert which I had flan. Inez suggested we have a carajillo which is a coffee with brandy in it and we all had one of those as well. It was interesting and the brandy must have been sweet because the drink was very sweet in flavor. As we finished it was basically time for them to rejoin the tour so I brought them back to the tour office and then headed back to the room for a pit stop.
At that point it was just past 3pm and I decided I would see the bullfighting ring by walking there. I knew that I needed to head up the Gran Via to Calle de Alcala and that the ring was a fair distance down there. I would pass the parks I was in on Saturday along the way so I really was retracing a fair bit. After passing the park I was basically in a not very interesting standard city area. It took me about 50 minutes or so to walk to the ring. It was of course closed probably because it was Sunday. All the same I took some pictures of it and the couple statues around it and then headed back. All in all the process took me just short of two hours and I think it was probably in the 3.5 mile range for distance based on my walking speed which was mainly my get somewhere speed since there was little new to see until I got there. For good or for ill it had gotten very warm out and I was glad I was wearing a short sleeve shirt unlike the majority of people out here. Aside from the rain my first full day in Madrid the weather has been quite nice. At times the breeze had a bit of a chill across it when it happens but I quite like that. I suspect today was in the 25C or so range. Upon returning to the room I basically wrote this then relaxed for a while before heading out to dinner early.
Being that I had to travel back home on Monday I decided to just head back to the Italian restaurant for dinner. I knew it would be a sit down meal and that it would be open early. I also knew it wasn't going to be too expensive so it all worked out for me. I had a more Spanish type lunch anyway so that requirement was fulfilled. At Pizza Marzano I had a beer and their calzone vesuvio which had spiced beef, pepperoni, green peppers, red onions and mozzarella. It was actually quite good though the spicy was on the tamer side. Still I really enjoyed it so I guess that was what mattered. From there I just headed back to the room to start the packing process in order to be on my way home.
Not a lot of pictures for day 8 but they can be found here.
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