La Granja is most famous for its gardens, which cover hundreds of acres and have all sorts of walking paths, lakes and statues to entertain the court. The garden's highlight are the two hundred fountains all over the property, many of them hidden, which are only turned on one day a year. Thankfully it wasn't the day we were there or we may have had to swim back to Madrid.

Either because of the rain or because the region is filled with palaces and castles, we had this one all to ourselves. So we wandered through the twenty or so rooms open to the public with nothing but our echo to accompany us. The rooms were fancifully decorated in typical baroque excess, although the occupants either never sat down or slept, or somewhere along the line somebody swiped all the furniture.

118. La Granja

Tuesday was the worst weather day of the trip, dark skies and heavy outbursts of rain, but there were enough breaks in the rain to make the day salvageable. We headed north to Segovia, stopping first at another royal palace, at La Granja. By the 1700's Spain had ceased doing anything important like saving Europe's soul, and the ruling class could settle down and spend what was left of their riches on nice baubles and palaces rather than wars and inquisitions. Unlike the austere Escorial palace, La Granja is clearly a baroque building, modeled, like most palaces of the time, on Versailles.