Becky's Year Abroad in Spain Blog: El Escorial, near Madrid Day Trip (Wednesday 12th November)

Hola Teresa y la clase 9C de Onslow St Audreys,
I hope you are all well. I apologise for the lateness of this next blog but I have been so busy lately that I have not had the time to write it-so to make up for this, there will be two blogs this week the first will be about 'El Escorial' which I went to 2 weeks ago on Wednesday 12th November and the second about my day trip to Segovia and Avila this Saturday (22nd November).
On Wednesday 12th November, for one of my courses about Relations between Spain and English-speaking countries, I had the chance to visit the famous royal summer palace of Philip II of The Royal Seat of San Lorenzo Monastery de 'El Escorial' which is near Madrid. This is where all the Kings and Queens of Spain up until Philip II's reign stayed during the summer, before they moved the Royal Palace in the 18th century to Madrid. Ironically my teacher told us that 'El Escorial' actually means a dump or a tip-which is quite a funny name for a palace and a odd place to choose to put the royal summer palace! To start of with when we arrived at the entrance to 'El Escorial' (which took about 2 hours and 30 mins from Valladolid) it was raining-not a great start! We had to wait in the rain for about 10 minutes while the teacher got the tickets and found a Spanish guide to take us around. Unfortunately I was unable to understand most of what Spanish guides said because the Spanish was very difficult and both guides we had talked very fast (we had a female guide for the first part and during the second part we had a male guide). However I found out later on that I was not the only Erasmus student that did not understand much, even the French boys had difficulty understanding! Despite this though I did really enjoy my visit and I was able to ask my teacher to clarify anything I did not understand as this course is taught in English. I also found out that our Prince of Wales (from the Renaissance times) actually ate stew at 'El Escorial' with the King of Spain Philip II. We saw all the state rooms which were very different from what I saw when I visited Buckingham Palace in London this summer-all the walls were white (to protect them from damage) and the bed that King slept in was really small! The style was much simpler than many of the churches I had seen in other cities in Spain. Moreover we visited the library and the church of the King (which was huge-it was about the size of many of the other churches I have seen in other cities but within in a huge palace). We also saw the crypt where they buried all the Kings and Queens of Spain up until the Renaissance times which was the only place in 'El Escorial' that was ornately decorated with gold. Later in the day when we had free time we were very lucky in that the rain had stopped and it was quite sunny-still very cold but it meant we could go and visit the royal gardens. Me and a German boy named Ken walked around the royal gardens which were huge-they went all the way around the palace and were amazing to look at. I think we were the only ones to visit the royal gardens but there were well-worth a visit! For the photos below I am indebted to a German boy Ken who took all of these photos and then gave them all to me because I accidentally forgot to bring my iPhone to 'El Escorial'. I had a really great time here despite the rainy start to the day. Overall I am very glad I chose to change to this module on 'Relaciones Historico-Culturales entre España y el Mundo Anglosajón' instead of a module which I was finding too hard on 'Teoria de la literatura' which was nothing like English Literary Theory.