Can anyone recommend a good half-day tour from Madrid to El Escorial/Valle de los Caidos in English? I'll be there next month with my sister who has never been to Spain and speaks no Spanish. I figure at least once, I'll need to just put her on a bus and have a few hours to myself. I've seen these places before and frankly would rather sit in the Plaza Mayor talking to my old Spanish friends, but I'd hate to have her miss seeing these sites.

Send her on a tour of Madrid with Stephen Drake-Jones (Chairman of The Wellington Society: web @ http://www.wellsoc.org ) in Madrid. He is fun and she will have a blast.

We did El Escorial on our own so I cannot help you there. You could sent her to Toledo. There is lots to do there for a day that would not require English and there ar elots of tours that go there.