More catching up....

Here's my post about Segovia and El Escorial:

Long day. Left Salamanca early and went to El Escorial. We got a guided tour en espanol. Sometimes I just didn’t understand the Spanish and sometimes I just plain couldn’t hear the guy. El Escorial is a really really old palace that isn’t that grand an abode but it boasts a rather extensive tomb area. I’m not kidding. We saw a circular room that had marble everywhere that housed marble tombs for kings. There was a gigantic chandelier and creepy marble cherubs on the wall. The tombs held former kings and the wives who bore sons. I can’t imagine knowing that my body would be put there when I died. It does not seem like a peaceful resting place as there is a constant stream of tourist parading through. Or maybe this appeals to the vanity of the royals. There were many other rooms with tombs that were made out of marble but they were less fancy. There was also a “rotting room” where the kings decompose so that their bones can go in the ornate tomb cherub room. There was the tomb of a queen whose name I can’t remember. When her husband, the king, was courting her, he made a quite tomb for the both of them to prove his everlasting devotion (betting that strategy would not work today). She married him. Then he took on a second wife and now she is alone in her tomb and according to our guide “comfortable”. There was also a room of tombs for royal children who died before the age of eight. Sad.
After El Escorial, I we went to Segovia where we saw the roman aqueduct which was quite rand and enormous. We also saw the castle that inspired the Disney logo. It is lovely but I would certainly not consider it a comfortable place to be. There was definite Muslim influence in the tiling inside the castle. I tried to take a picture but it didn’t really work out with an average Nikon camera. There was a bizarre room that had statues of kings and queens lining the ceiling. They were probably over 10 off the ground presumably so no one could touch them and ruin them. Each statue looked about 1.5 feet tall and was brightly painted. Each stature also had a description of the person it honored underneath it. There was also a little iglesia in the castle. I really don’t know what to call it- worship room? More paintings and statues of Jesus and Mary. And a graphic (and somewhat racist) tapestry depicting the crusades. It showed a Christian soldier on horseback with a sword. Dark, severed heads littered the ground beneath him. Speaking of racism, while traversing the narrow, quaint streets of Segovia I spotted an electronics store that was called “The Japanese Store”. The image on the sign was of a large, smiling face with slanted eyes. I wish I had gotten a picture of it. I was shocked. I’ve never seen anything like that before.