Another grey one here in Edinburgh and I am daydreaming of the Iberian Peninsula. With all that drama in Portugal, and pretty much all my pictures from Spain stolen, I haven't posted much about our adventures there. (And I promise the bull fight post is coming soon... DAD.) So today, I thought I'd try to teleport back to El Escorial.
I'd wanted to go ever since I saw an awesome documentary about Spanish art that did a ton of interior shots there. I loved that Philip II's tiny bedroom looked directly into the main cathedral. Perfect sight lines from the modest bed to the high altar. It's good to be the king I guess.
But I was so intrigued. I mean, everyone talks about the immense, infinite seeming even exterior, but the interior itself (not the art or the enormous amount of dead bodies it houses as part palace, part mausoleum) is sort of neglected. I think largely because it's pretty simple. But I was in love.
The wood work in that place. Ooh, boy. I am going to get me some wood work and hardware like they got going on in that place. I love the predominant color schemes with terra cotta and green and wood and blue, beautiful tiles.
The place is massive and my ankle was acting up that day (especially considering the long walk to the bus station, the detour when google maps sent us to a weird, incorrect location, and a 45 minute bus ride that made all three of us car sick) but we even went the long way around (with a frozen lemonade pit stop) to get to the lovely gardens with hedge mazes and valencia orange trees and magnolias and Spanish roses as far as the eye can see. I'm lost there now, somewhere in the middle of the hedges in the middle of the week.
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