Hello gls858,

Did you stay at that beautiful house at El Escorial? Lucky you are being there for FREE becasue I imagine it would be very expensive to spend 7 days in such a house at El Escorial. By the way did you go the Valley of the Fallen?

Are you living in the US?

Yes we stayed 7 days. The place was beautiful. We could see the Casitas del Infante from the kitchen window! Only a about one kilometer from the monastery. The only bad thing was that it was
65 steps from the street to the back door! The contact there told us that all of the houses were built by friends of Franco's. The owner of the house is an associate of my brother in law. He offered a weeks stay as a prize in a fund rasier.
My brother in law won, but couldn't go, so he gave it to us. So lucky is right!
Yes we spent an afternoon at Valle de los Caidos.
VERY impressive. It's hard to imagine what it must have cost to build something like that.

Yes,my wife and I both have lived in the US our entire lives.