Madrid, part 3: El Escorial

On Friday morning, we took the 7 metro to the end of the line and boarded a regional train bound for the little town of El Escorial in the Sierra de Guadarrama mountains. The landscape quickly turned dry and scrubby, with lots of short holm oak trees, orange-yellow dirt, and scattered deer grazing on weeds in the sun.

After getting off the train, we walked out of town and through the expansive forest gardens to the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial. This huge complex was built for the Spanish royal family in the 15-1600's; it features a monastery, basilica, royal palace, pantheon, library, museum, university, school, and hospital, as well as many paintings and tapestries by artists we'd seen at the Prado. I like this description from Wikipedia:

Built primarily from locally quarried gray granite, square and sparsely ornamented, El Escorial is austere, even forbidding, in its outward appearance, seemingly more like a fortress than a monastery or palace. It takes the form of a gigantic quadrangle, approximately 224 by 153 metres, which encloses a series of intersecting passageways and courtyards. At each of the four corners is a square tower surmounted by a spire, and, near the center of the complex (and taller than the rest), rise the pointed belfries and round dome of the basilica. Philip's instructions to Juan Bautista de Toledo were simple and clear, directing that the architects should produce "simplicity in the construction, severity in the whole, nobility without arrogance, majesty without ostentation." 

The visit passes through a stunning library, into the basilica, and through the royal residences. The unexpected highlight was the crypt -- especially the final room at the bottom of a stairwell lined in dark marble and glowing bronze: the Royal Pantheon, an octagonal mausoleum where most of the kings and queens since Charles I have been buried.

We ate a picnic lunch and stalked some birds in the smaller royal gardens out back, then struck out north of town into the hills. We made it pretty far up, through piney forests and lots of chirping birds, and were rewarded with wide views all the way to Madrid in the distance. We wound back down through a series of parks to the train station, where B's cold drink at the cafe was accompanied by the requisite tapas (two baguette-sized pieces of bread with ham on top).

We got onion & cheese empanadas and yuca bread balls from a nearby bakery to accompany our dinner -- homemade omelettes, not particularly Spanish but delicious.