A long day of sight-seeing just outside Madrid. We had to be at the school at 9:15am, and I overheard students saying they got one or two hours of sleep. Of course, many of them are getting sick...

Our first stop was Santa Cruz del Valle de los Caidos (Valley of the Fallen Soldiers) which is a large basilica on top of a hill with two tombs inside, one of which contains Francisco Franco, the fascist ruler of Spain from 1939 to 1975. It is one of the creepiest places I've ever seen. Of all the basilica's in Italy I saw two years ago (and I saw MANY), I never had a creepy feeling. Just awe, feeling small and recognizing the power of the Catholic Church. The Valle de los Caidos felt evil. The architecture, fascist style, reminded me of images from the Nazi propaganda film, Triumph of the Will. It is not an attractive building, and all the angels had menacing looks, giant swords and hoods over their heads. VERY dark. Every time I tried to take a picture of Franco's tombstone, it came out too dark. Figures.

One of the Dark Angel Statues

Inside the basilica

Outside the basilica
Once leaving Franco to rot in his tomb, we went to Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial (The Royal Monastery of Saint Lawrence), which is located in a quaint town with small, cobblestone streets. Our esteemed tour guide, Angel, told us several stories about the Monastery. My favorite is this: It was built by King Philip II as a summer house for the royal court when Madrid got too hot. The huge building, which is shaped like a grill, was dedicated to Saint Lawrence. Why a grill? Well, legend says that when Lawrence was tortured by burning by the Roman Empire, he refused to denounce his faith and said something like, "turn me over, I'm done on this side"! Now he is the patron saint of BBQ chefs. I found the grill symbol on an obelisk and all the town trash cans!

Arsty picture of the Royal Monastary

A flight of escaleras in El Escorial

San Lorenzo symbol on a trash can

The Royal Monastery through the trees
The day trip ended at a wildlife preserve, Canada Real (Royal Canyon), which is in the Sierra de Guadarrama mountain range. We saw lots of animals that had been wounded in some way by man or man-made things, and brought to Canada Real to be nurtured back to health. Many of the animals are not again set free because they become accustom to humans and unable to defend themselves in the wild. The best part of the LONG hike and tour was howling with the wolves. We actually made the wolves howl by howling ourselves for a minute. It was pretty cool. Tomorrow, day trip to Toledo, an ancient medieval city!

The Sierra de Guadarrama mountain range

Our guide, guiding us in the howling

The alpha male wolf, Luc, joining us in a bit of howling