My Impression of El Escorial

Like I said before, this is pretty much the first actual downtime I've had where I'm able to sit down and write.  So, it's going to be a lot of posts quickly.  I'm just trying to give my impressions of the cities I've visited so far and then eventually, my overall impression of Spain.

During the second day we were in Spain, we visited El Escorial.  El Escorial is approximately thirty minutes to an hour from Madrid.  As a result, we just took the Metro there.  It was a fairly long trip[ considering the Metro wasn't air conditioned nor is it fit for someone as tall as me, especially when you sit across from someone.  It was interesting though to watch what the train passed.  It was basically, what I could compare it to, similar to the desert.  There wasn't much green or grass, but there were a decent amount of trees scattered around.  Secondly, I found it interesting that about every house or every other house had a pool.  I don't know if that's because most houses don't have air conditioning or what.

However, luckily, or however you view it, there's not much to say about El Escorial.  It was built in 1563 and has served various purposes throughout the years.  It has been a monastery, a royal palace, a university (which it still is), and a museum.  It's housed the army of Spain there and has a hunting ground for royalty and their guests.

Funny thing though, everything in El Escorial was closed on Monday.  So, basically I can describe the trip in the pictures below.  Just all different views of what we got to see on Monday.

Like before, this is just a preview of the photos. You should be able to see all the photos that made the cut for Facebook.  Flickr is still not cooperating, so I'll work on that eventually.