El escorial

Last Friday for our "paseo" class (part of my History and Culture Seminar is that we go on short trips around Madrid and get lectured on Fridays while we see the stuff we get to learn about - they're called paseos, which translates to "walks") we went to El escorial which is an old royal palace and monastery located about an hour train ride north of Madrid. Our professor warned us that it would be really cold, so of course, it was actually pretty nice out when we went - the weather channels, websites, and people are always wrong about the weather here x)

Library at El escorial

The escorial was pretty from the outside, and creepy on the inside, complete with multiple rooms underground where a bunch of dead kings and members of the royal families have their tombs... a bit creepier are the two tombs that are empty and waiting in their special spots for the next two royals to die. Anyway, besides that we also got to see the library of the escorial, which, when it was built was the most important library in Europe, and is still a very important library today - a very cool place located in one of the escorial's towers with a beautiful ceiling, books leafed in gold, and lots of old maps and globes.