Pardo, Escorial, Salamanca

This past Friday, my school took us on a trip to visit the Pardo and the Monestary of Escorial.  First, a little history.  Spain was ruled under a dictatorship up until 1975 (wow!).  The only reason the totalitarianism ended was because Franco (the dictator) died.  The Pardo is where Franco spent many years of his reign.  The palace was enormous and way too big for any human being.  Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures inside the building, except for in one room, but here are a couple. 

After the visit to the Pardo, we headed to the Monestary in Escorial.  The town was beautiful and there was plently of snow on the mountain tops.  The building that we visited is very important to the history of Spain.  It was built where a battle was one against France (i'm not sure which one! sorry!!). The building is massive and many kings and queens have lived in the place.  The most important fact about the Monestary is that all of the previous kings and queens are buried in the way underground of the building in a massive tomb.  A very creepy room that i was not allowed to snag a picture of. But here isa a picture of the outside grounds!

The next morning I had to wake up bright and early at 6:30 in order to catch a bus to Salamanca to visit Jordan!! I went with my two friends and it was very fun! We visited the Casa de las Conchas (house of the shells/ picture below) which Fodors said was great but ended up being a well in the middle of the library (but the wall was cool!) There's a legend in Salamanca (since it is such a big college town) that if you find the frog on this massive university building you will be blessed with good luck academically.  The frog was impossible to find and I needed the help from Jordan but I saw it and am hoping for good luck in the years to come!! The building wall is filled with hundreds of tiny statues and it turns out the frog is on the head of a skull in the very corner of the building.  After we visited the frog, we went back to our hostel (which we shared with 7 other people whom we did not know) to rest for a little bit before heading out into the night.  We went to Plaza Mayor (picture below) to watch the Real Madrid game in an Irish Pub, did some tapa crawling, and ended up going home early because of our lengthy weekend before!