El Escorial (Feb 9)

We woke up early and got to the Renfe train station to catch the Cercanias suburban train out to El Escorial. Well, we missed the first train and eventually got the next one! El Escorial is a fortress/castle commissioned by King Felipe and was built between 1563-1584. (You should click on the link to see photos!!) We saw the Hall of Battles: a long thin room frescoed with major battles of Spain's history. You could easily spend half a day trying to take it in!

We also got to see the Pantheon of the Kings, where 26 kings and queens are buried. There are 3 open spaces, all reserved! No room for Juan Carlos, the current king...

After trying to take in as much as we could, we took the train back to Madrid to see the Royal Palace! It's built on the site of a former Hapsburg Palace that burned down. It's Europe's third greatest palace, including "The Porcelain Room" made of 300 separate porcelain plates on the wall held up by screws and the "Smoking Room" for men modeled after a Chinese opium den! The "Throne Room" was amazing...gold and red. It looked fake it was so perfect!

After the Royal Palace we walked to Puerta del Sol and with Rick Steves' guide, we saw a lot of neat things on the way. One thing is that many of these streets have been the same for hundreds of years. That means that street signs were placed before people could read, so the signs have pictures on them to help the illiterate navigate the city!

Our final stop was the Reina Sofia. The most notable piece of art here was Picasso's Guernica. 11'x26'. Amazing! It was great to learn some history and to have help understanding what was going on in this work. Franco, leader of Spain in 1937, gave Hitler permission to try out his new air force on this town. In doing so the town was leveled. On the lower left is a woman holding her dead baby, and on the right a woman dragging her injured leg behind her. It was powerful in the way I picture standing at the Vietnam Memorial to be. Silence required...

On to Madrid! (Feb 8)

It was a rainy morning so we took a taxi to the train station. We took a high speed train to Madrid, and found our way to "Hostal Isabel", which was at a woman's house. Can you guess her name?? That's right. It was Beatrice! We never figured that one out! Another mystery... we had a bidet in our room, but not a toilet. Oh well...

We were pooped and it was still rainy, so we settled in and took a one hour nap, then headed out to the Thyssen-Bornemiza museum. We used the metro, but we were still soaked by the time we arrived. This museum is filled with major works by minor artists and minor works by major artists. Overall worth a visit, but too much art to cover and too much impressionism for Jen! There were works by Titan, Tintoretto, El Greco, Caravaggio, and Van Gogh.

We ate a lunch of tapas, which was expensive but a great sampling of Spanish classics! Then on to the Prado! The Prado Museum is HUGE! The greatest art museum in Spain. We were overwhelmed, and starting to get museumed out! Enough "Madonna with Child" already! When there is so much great art in one place it's hard to appreciate it all. We did get to see Tintoretto's "Last Supper" which was on loan from the Uffizi in Venice. Funny...weren't we just there?? We also go to see "Las Meninas" by Velazquez.

One Long Day in Sevilla (Feb 7)

Andrew had an interesting night on the train with the worst roommates ever! They were 2 old guys, one who turned the light on in the middle of the night to look at his watch! Hello!! Then, early in the morning before the conductor came around to wake people up, he again turned the overhead light on, got up, folded up his bed and sat in the chair waiting to arrive. It was clear to Andrew there would be no more sleeping!!!

When we arrived in Sevilla, we had a hard time navigating the city. We did as we always do, and our first stop was the tourist information booth for a map. This map had no compass rose, and we finally found our room when we realized that the top of the map pointed West, not North! Who puts West at the top of the map??

We settled in and headed out to the bullfighting ring and museum. For 4 Euros, we got a guided tour from a guide who spoke Spanish, English, French, and was able to communicate with people who spoke Italian. All this for a tourist group of 6 people! At this ring, only 3 matadors have been killed, and when they are, the bull and it's mother are killed out of superstition.

Next we went to Santa Maria de la Sede, the third largest cathedral in Europe and the largest Gothic cathedral in the world! Amazing! It has the largest cedar altarpiece ever made, of course, coated in gold. It tells the story of the entire New Testament. Another reason this cathedral is well known is that it houses whatever is left of Christopher Columbus (after being shipped around the world). We had a great tour guide here, and we climbed the Giralda tower- no stairs, just winding ramps so they could ride a horse to the top to ring the bells. This is a must see if you are ever in Sevilla!

That night we went to Flamenco Los Gallos. Each song/dance was about 15 min long and each had different dancers and musicians. The Flamenco started very calm and built to something loud with stomping and clapping and strong, sharp movements. We had a great time! then returned home and climbed into bed.

Our Favorites: Barcleona

1) Hair! We saw a mohawk dating a she-mullet, a 60+ year old woman with intentional bright purple hair that matched her shirt(see in center of photo), a woman with a boy cut with one long spiral curl on each side of her neck, rat tails, dirty dreds and so much more!


2) Weird metros! To transfer ou have to exit the subway, walk a few blocks, and re-enter. You never knew if you'd be charged the transfer rate or the full rate... sometimes you win, sometimes you lose!

A day of recovery (Feb 6 2007)

Well, here it is September and I'm back to blogging about February! Life has been busy, but I want to finish telling the story of all our travels!

We spent the morning catching up on our Journal so it would be easy to Blog when we got home! Then we had lunch, talked with Andy and Carol Larsen's for a few hours, and headed out to an early dinner. On the way back we stopped by Fargo's for more chocolates to bring home for family and friends. If you never received one, don't worry, no one did. They didn't make it home, but they sure were tasty!

Then we packed up and caught our train to Sevilla. Just a fun fact: In Spain, men and women do not sleep in the same cabin, so we were neighbors instead of roommates.