El Escorial

Well, my parents left yesterday and we hope that they are nearly home.  They ended up with a 12 hour layover in Chicago, so they were stuck there still waiting to get home (And as neither took their phones, I will take it on faith that they are alright.  Although if they didn’t come back to my house after we left them at the airport metro stop, we’ll assume all is well.)  We loved having them here and we will miss them terribly.

We also just found out that Lee doesn’t have work this week!  This week is kinda like the week between Christmas and New Year’s in the US, where there is no school, lots less work and all around slow.  It is because the big celebration day with gift giving and all is Kings Day, Jan 6th, when the three kings delivered their gifts to the baby Jesus.

So, because he had time off we decided to do some daytrips.  We want to see Avila where it has the largest historical monument - their complete city walls - in the world.  So, we woke early, rushed to the train station and got there to find it was the wrong station.  But the worker still sold us tickets saying it was only a 12 min. metro ride to the next stop.  Well, it took us 40 min to cross the city, I don’t know what she was talking about.  We missed the train, which was non-refundable and were pretty frustrated.  But they we decided to take a closer train to El Escorial, which was very cheap.  There were stairs on the train!  Eliora had a blast.

El Escorial is the place where the Tomb of the Kings is.  There is a monastery where Spain has buried her Kings and royal families for centuries and we wanted to see that.   But upon arriving, we found it more expensive than planned and since we’d used all our money on tickets to Avila, we couldn’t get in.  But, I’ve got to tell that the whole city was covered in mist and made it very magical.

In wandering around El Escorial, they have set up the entire town to Bethlehem in life-size.  It was by far the most incredible Nativity scene I have ever seen.  They have filled streets and plazas with manikins of paper-mache.  They had the obvious of shepherds, kings and the Christ-child, but they had so much more.

They had the pig sellers, vegetable stands (with real vegetables),  birds…. it was HUGE!

There was one man who set up shop selling castañas (roasted chestnuts), dressed up like all the pretend sellers. We got to try chestnuts roasted on an open fire, for the first time. It really felt like Christmas.

They showed numerous scenes from Christ’s life: the flight into Egypt, the trial with Pilate washing his hands and the crowd choosing to free Barabas rather than Christ. 

There is no way we would have seen anything like it in the US and I am glad to have seen it.

I’ve got to tell about the hot chocolate.  It was nothing I expected.  It was exactly what it said - hot chocolate, that is “chocolate that is hot”.  It was a cup of melted chocolate that started to firm up as it cooled.  It was kindof a thickish pudding.  You could not drink it, but rather eat it with a spoon.  It  was a bit darker than milk chocolate.  It was delicious!

We stopped for lunch, played at a park and took the train home.  We had such a fun day.  It felt like Christmas more that you can believe, surrounded by a magical mist, drinking hot chocolate, eating roasted chestnuts and walking thru Bethlehem.