Watkins is in San Lorenzo del Escorial

All we saw in San Lorenzo del Escorial was the royal monastery, but wow was it worth the stop!

the whole palace/monastery

Me in the plaza outside the monastery

Our tour started in the library, which felt like our Harry Potter room at WWU. Same size, but all the books were gold. It was really impressive. It's the richest library in the world since the library at Alexandria burned down, and it felt like history was calling from the books. So many rare, forbidden, beautiful books!! One was literally written in gold, 8 kilos of the stuff (that's almost 18lbs)! The ceiling was just as stunning. Beautifully painted, it depicts the philosophers and their main areas of study; Arithmetic, Grammar, Geography, Music, etc. The geography section even included a planetarium, with Earth as the center of the universe and all!

some sneaky top camera pictures

thanks google.  See the books? and the planetarium?

The idea behind this incredibly lavish monastery was that King Phillip the Second wanted to live like a monk and have the monks live like kings in order to be closer to God and his people. The whole place is perfectly geometric, with 90° angles everywhere, even the garden.

There were 5 doors in the palace that were insanely beautiful, especially in contrast with the fairly plain palace. The one we were looking at had over 2,500 wood pieces made of over 25 different types of wood. To commission this intricate inlay today would cost over 3 billion dollars for only wood and labor!! It took about a year to create each door.

The mausoleum was insanely ornate, especially compared to the simplicity of the palace. The entire building was made of marble. Walls, ceiling, floor, tombs, decorations, everything. They used a few different colors of marble, from different regions in Spain. There was also gilded bronze everywhere. The mausoleum was split down the middle, Kings on one side, their Queens opposite. Since many of the Kings outlived their wives, only the one that was the mother of the next king was there. Queen Elisabeth the second was the one exception to the split. She fought a civil war for her blood-right to the throne, earning her a spot on the Kings’ wall, with her husband on the Queens’ wall. But no smelly dead bodies! There was a designated “rotting room” that the bodies stay in for anywhere from 50-60 years so that only the bones go into such an expensive mausoleum. They also had different rooms for siblings and children, as well as other Kings and Queens that were buried after the royal one filled up. All of these rooms and the hallways between them were marble. 

the whisper corner

As we left our tour we walked thorough a hall with beautiful stations of the cross paintings on the way to a perfectly acoustic room. Because of the King’s obsession with geometry, a room was created where if you whisper into one corner, it’s like you’re whispering to the ear of whomever is in the opposite corner. So fun!

view from the courtyard of the kings

The Kings: Josaphad, Ezechias, David, Salomon, Josias, Manasses

trying to get a good picture for you guys

turns out it's real difficult

This is the chapel- see that huge wall? All beautiful gold and paintings. 

I really did try. I feel like my years of creeping should have prepared me for this. Alas, they have not.
This is the hallway with the stations of the cross.

Back to the bus to drive to Toledo!