El Escorial & the Misadventures of 6 American Girls.

Here are some of the students from my group (notice how there are only 2 guys). I'm on the far left.

The good thing about going on these excursions with ISA that I've been on before is that I remember where everything is and I remember some of the history. Because of this, I am able to ask more questions and enjoy the tour more. So yesterday, Oct. 3, we left Madrid early in the morning and went to Valle de los Caidos. Valle de los Caidos is a church that the dictator Franco had built into a mountain, which is near El Escorial. This church was built to show Franco's power and strength. In this church he had soldiers buried here who died during the Spanish Civil War (but only the soldiers from his side). Later, this became the burial place for Franco. Inside the church there are several beautiful chapels with various statues of La Virgen. The view from this church looks out onto a beautiful landscape.

After we spent some time in Valle de los Caidos (Valley of the Fallen) we went to El Escorial to visit el Monasterio de San Lorenzo, which is in the city of El Escorial. Now I've been here before, but I absolutely love this monastery. I've never seen anything like it before, but the city doesn't have much to offer. Some history about the monastery: it was built during the 16th century by Spain's most powerful king, Felipe II. The monastery was built as a palace because the Palacio Real hadn't been built yet. San Lorenzo is beautiful and all the rooms all serve a different purpose and have different styles and decorations. Today, the monastery is for monks (obvio!), but they also have a school there that is for boys to study to become monks or priests themselves. Our tour guide, Victor, was fantastico! He joked around a lot with us and was very knowledgeable. All of the tour guides I have had so far have been amazing and have I mentioned that the tours are all in Spanish? YAY!

We walked towards the city center of El Escorial to eat lunch and like I said, there is not much here, but I do have a fantastic story. I hope it is as funny when you read it as it was to experience it.

So six of us decided to venture off and find a small and cheap place to eat. We stopped at a restaurant called Brillante, which had a terrace outside (more like patio tables across the street) for us to eat at. We liked the idea, but we wanted to sit inside. The waiter came out and said go around the corner of the restaurant and there is a door on your left to go into to sit down. We did what he said, but as we passed by the doors, none were open except for the 4th one. As we got there, a young waiter (about 18) popped out and excitedly welcomed us into the restaurant. Now, we assumed that there was some "secret" passageway between the two places where the older waiter told the younger one that we were coming. We sat down and the walls were covered by beautiful water color paintings of San Lorenzo. Now, the thing in Spain is when you go to a smaller town, the menu is on the outside of the restaurant and you're not always given menus. The young guy asked us what we wanted to drink. Rachel said water and he asked "con gas o sin gas" (carbonated or regular). She didn't understand and had him repeat it 3 times (mistake #1)! Then I tried to politely explain to her what he said. The rest of us quickly said "agua sin gas". He then asked what we wanted to eat and we asked if we could see a menu. He then asked "menu del dia?" (menu of the day). We said yes and he left (mistake #2-you'll see why). Now we were probably sitting at the table for 10 minutes before the young guy came back with our waters and a menu. As he left we then noticed that the menu had been hand written! He took is time to write out the menu! The poor guy spent so much time just to give us the menu. The worst thing is that only 1 of us ordered off that menu. When he brought the drinks he also brought bread and jamon serrano (curred ham). Then we ordered. Rachel ordered the menu of the day, Emily & Sheila ordered bocadillo con jamon(french bread with ham in it), I ordered a bocadillo con tortilla and Naomi wasn't hungry so she ordered a Cola Cao (hot chocolate and mistake #3). When Naomi gave her order the young waiter said "I have to go ask my boss" and then he left. No one said anything to Naomi, but first he wrote out the menu for us, then only one person ordered off the menu and third one person just wanted cola cao! He didn't come back. We all talked a little while we waited for our food and talked about the monastery. Then our food arrived. We all started eating and everything tasted great, even Naomi's cola cao. Ten minutes into eating, Sheila realizes that what she ordered for lunch is the EXACT same thing that we had as an appetizer(bread and curred ham) just with another piece of bread on top (mistake #4). Now Sheila is an easy going person and as soon as she had this epiphany she started laughing at her self then we started thinking about everything that had happened at the resturant and we ALL started realizing that we were probably at a different restaurant and we had no idea. So now ALL (well except for Rachel) started laughing nonstop (part of the problem was because we were tired). Later the waiter decides to check on us (by the way we are still talking about our stupidity), but he didn't come alone. He brought a friend. He comes up to our table and says "el es mi amigo" (he's my friend) and we all said hi. They both start removing plates from our tables but halfway back to the stairs (we were underground) the friend starts laughing and has to put the plates down so he won't drop them! Now he wasn't laughing to be mean, I KNOW our waiter told him about us, but because we were laughing at ourselves I think it was hard for him not to laugh either. We waited around a little, then we asked for the bill. The friend returns (we think our waiter couldn't hold in his laughter and that's why he didn't come to our table). Now in Spain the waiters wait for the bill, but normally for dinner one person just pays immediately. Since we all planned on paying for our own food we took a few minutes to figure out how much we all needed to pay and who got what amount of euros back (mistake #5). The poor friend was just standing there, but as we were trying to figure out everything, he had to turn his head away from us 2 TIMES to try to hold in his laughter! He left and came back. By the way, we were STILL laughing at ourselves. As we left, we said a friendly good-bye to both guys and started walking out, but I stopped just outside the doorway to see the name of the restaurant ( it's Jarana, not the same one as we thought!) and as Emily and I stepped out the doorway we heard rumbling laughter coming from inside the restaurant. One thing I wish I had thought of was to have taken a picture of the two waiters, just to have as a token for that hilarious and memorable lunch. I have the best time telling this story (and trust me, all 5-because Rachel was NOT happy at all-of us have told this story to EVERYONE in our group). I hope you enjoyed it and that I wrote well enough for it to be funny.

Besitos, mañana I will tell you about Toledo (both days I was there).