The cross country drive to La Granja (in the village of San Ildefonso near Segovia) would have been uneventful, even boring, had we not taken a wrong exit (in fairness, two exits were roughly 18 inches apart), and were then lured by a McDonalds billboard to ignore the GPS in search of familiar food (skimpy breakfast, like I said) which we never found. Hungry and cranky, we eventually found our way here, marriage intact.
La Granja is quite the place. I was here with Sheryle, Stephanie and Juan about 7 or 8 years ago during the summer to see the fountains, which are only turned on a few times per year (they are amazing). While we won't be able to see the fountains in action, there are 1,500 acres of gardens and several museums, including the royal palace, built by King Philip V in the early 1700's to serve as the summer palace for Spanish royalty.
La Granja means "The Farm" - this is royalty's idea of a farmhouse. Not surprisingly, Philip V was the grandson of Louis XIV of France - who built Versailles. La Granja is modeled after it.
After checking into the Parador and finally eating lunch, we walked up (as John commented, everything's uphill in Spain!) to begin exploring the gardens. Notice the snow in the background - it's a warm, sunny day, but there's still a nice cool breeze from the surrounding mountains. This is a French-style garden, emphasizing symmetry with alleys of trees, boxwood hedges, statues, and fountains. Even though trees are just starting to bud and flower beds haven't yet been planted, it's still beautiful. And the fact that we nearly had the place to ourselves made it even better.
Even without jets of water, the fountains are impressive works of art.
And John was equally impressed with the engineering.
With 1,50
0 acres to explore, we only saw a small part before we decided we'd walked uphill enough for the evening and headed back (uphill!) to the hotel. En route back a sign caught my eye -
My smile faded when I realized that the shop was closed - but I'll be back!
From the balcony of our hotel room we can see a bit of the snow-covered mountains above the town.
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