Monastery of El Escorial

We took a city tour to Escorial ans saw the beautiful Monastery of El Escorial. I was absolutely amazed at the beauty of it. Our tour guide told us that it is still an active monestary on one half and the other half is a boy's school. They also still hold mass there every week. We went on a Sunday so we only got to go into the cathedral for a few minutes in between services. I still felt bad going in there on a tour while there were people in the pews trying to pray, it felt kinda disrespectful to me. On the other hand I was really glad we got to go in and see the sanctuary b/c it was beautiful. The intricate details on all the statues and murals were breathtaking.

I was also impressed with the amount of history there as well. All of the Spanish royal family is buried there. They took us down to see the burial of all the kings as well as of all the queens who had a son inheriet the throne. The burial room was really beautiful. Then they took us upstairs to show us where the all the rest of the members of the royal family were buried. It was a bit of an eerie feeling walking around all these graves but at the same time it was really cool b/c it was all members of the royal family going back hundreds of years.

They also had a very large library of old handwritten books. Each one worth thousands of dollars. There were hundreds of books, all of them turned around backwards so as to better preserve the pages. I thought it was really amazing how such and old building with such a rich history is still functioning today.