Bus = Misery and a Town with Too Few Taxis

El Escorial and Valle de los Caidos were on our day trip hit list. Hopefully in one day, although the transportation to/from the latter seemed less than simple and turned out worse than expected.

If you've ever traveled with the Stackler*Williams family you know that my aggressive motion sickness genes were passed right on down to both boys. Ben and Nate are now so practiced at vomiting on planes that they make no mess at all. We take precautions (wrist bands, Benadryl when necessary) of course but somehow we hadn't thought about the bus ride to mountainous El Escorial. Or rather we hadn't realized how far away it was. If you suffer from motion sickness, you know there is almost nothing worse than a rocking, swaying, closed-space, gas-fumed-enriched bus; it usually takes only 15 minutes or so before nausea sets in. We avoid them whenever we can. And yet most travel usually involves a few bus rides (airplane to airport, train station to city centre, etc.) so I usually insist on a seat in the front. This time, we were right up front but both Ben and I began to feel so truly awful that we considered just getting off the bus in the middle of nowhere.

But we made it to El Escorial, which was oh-so-hot, toured the palace and its gardens. We learned the palace wasn't used much by the royals but it was built in a massive, austere way. A Don't-Mess-With-Us architecture. A hall featuring huge detailed murals of battles won by the Spanish armies and armada was a highlight. And the gardens were fun for Ben and Nate as we were among the very few idiots in the 100-degree heat running around the hedges. The highlight was when teenagers threw some bread into a massive carp pool and a feeding frenzy broke out.

We tried to figure out how to get to Valle de Los Caidos to see the Monument to the Fallen built by Franco after Spain's Civil War as this was really something Ed wanted to do. You'd think this would be really simple, well-traveled route (only a few miles from El Escorial) but somehow we couldn't catch a cab and the one bus per day was out of the question. Unfortunately, after standing around at a taxi stand in the blazing sun for half an hour we admitted defeat. We managed to catch a shorter bus ride to the train station but it was a disappointment.

Ahhhh, trains: mostly straight, no sway, pleasant odor, and air-conditioned. A motion-sickness sufferer's delight.