Memories of Past Trips to Spain

Mexico is very dear to me.  I've lost track of the number of times I have been there in the past 40 years... probably at least 50 times.  But I also love Spain.  If it weren't so far away and more expensive, I would probably go there much more frequently.  I have been there six times, and as I mentioned in the previous post, I will be returning again this year.

I wasn't always so enamored of Spain however.  My first trip was back in 1978, shortly after the death of dictator Francisco Franco.  I had a few years of teaching under my belt, and I decided to take a break from my summer work on my master's degree.

On that trip I was, of course, fascinated by the historic sights that I saw, but I really liked Mexico much better.  It would be years before I returned again.  I started my trip in Madrid.  Madrid, back in those days, really didn't impress me that much.  I thought it was a rather dowdy city.  I wasn't even that impressed with the Prado, Madrid's great art museum.  In spite of the collection of masterpieces, it seemed rather gloomy to me.  (Since then, the building has been completely renovated and enlarged, and it is a wonderful museum.)

From Madrid I took a number of day excursions to nearby attractions.  I saw El Escorial, the huge palace / monastery / basilica complex built by King Philip II in the 1500s... Toledo, the medieval capital of Spain... and Segovia, which remains my favorite city in Spain.

The Alcázar, the fairy-tale castle of Segovia

I then set out from Madrid, taking the train to Granada, the last stronghold of the Moors.  Seated next to me was a young fellow whom I assumed was Spanish.  I started a conversation, but he spoke no Spanish.  He did however speak fluent English. It turned out that he was a tourist from Saudi Arabia.  His name was Mahmoud.  He was actually from Lebanon, but he lived and worked in Saudi Arabia.  When we got off the train, he attached himself to me, and we ended up traveling through the southern cities of Granada, Córdoba, and Sevilla together.  This was the area of Spain that has the strongest influence of the Moslem Moors who invaded the peninsula in the Middle Ages.  As we visited the monuments of the Moorish occupation such as the Alhambra Palace in Granada, and the Mosque of Córdoba, he was able to explain to me many of the things we saw, and translated Arabic inscriptions on the walls.  I, on the other hand, explained to him Christian imagery in the Catholic cathedrals.

 

A much younger me, in the gardens of the Alhambra Palace

After Sevilla, we parted ways.  We kept in touch for a few years.  The last time I heard from him, he said he was thinking about returning to Lebanon.  I sometimes wonder what ever happened to him, and if he was a casualty of the civil war that raged in Lebanon a short time after that.

From Sevilla, I took a bus to Salamanca.  It was a holiday weekend, and there was not a hotel room to be found in the city.  I ended up spending the night in the train station, and the next morning I took the train back to Madrid to finish up my stay.

I didn't return to Spain until 1999.  My teaching colleague, Jane (whom you met in my posts on the Yucatán), was organizing a student trip to Spain, and I went along as a chaperone.  I was amazed at how much the country had changed for the better.  Madrid seemed a much more vibrant and attractive place.  Even the food seemed much better.

Typical of student tours, it was a whirlwind trip.  (Can you imagine that in one day we did a brief excursion from Madrid to Toledo, and then returned to the capital to visit the Royal Palace and the Prado Museum?!)  Nevertheless, it was a great trip, and we had a great group of students.  

One place I did not care for was the Costa del Sol.  It is a beach resort area lined with high-rise hotels, and it really did not hold much appeal for me.  The boys in the group were quite excited when they found out that the beaches are topless.  They were disappointed, however, when they found out that most of the women sunbathing topless were older and less attractive than what they were hoping to see.

From the Costa del Sol we took a day trip to Morocco... and that was the one part of the trip that I disliked.  Part of the problem was that the excursion was much too long.  We left early in the morning by bus to Algeciras, a port city opposite Gibraltar, and then took a ferry boat to Morocco.  Another tour bus then met us to take us to two cities, Tetuan and Tangiers.  It was late at night before we returned to our hotel in the Costa del Sol, and we were exhausted.  The females in our group, even though they were dressed very conservatively, were very uncomfortable because the men were constantly leering at them.  The vendors were extremely irritating.  If you think vendors in Mexico are annoying you should see them in Tangiers!  Uncharacteristic of me, I actually shouted at one to leave me alone.  I will not, however, judge the entire country by that one excursion.  That would be like visitors who bad-mouth Mexico after a day trip to Tijuana.

The trip ended with one short day in Barcelona, a place that I had not previously visited.  It was almost painful to have only one day in that beautiful city.

After that trip, I was eager to return to Spain.  In 2004, the year I retired, my retirement gift to myself was a trip to Spain in September (when everyone else was back in school... ha! ha!).  I had three glorious, sunny weeks in Madrid, Toledo, Segovia, Barcelona and Sevilla.  After my much too brief visit to Barcelona on the previous trip, I scheduled five days there to see the sights more thoroughly.  It must rank as one of the best trips of my life.

 

The Cathedral of Barcelona

My next trip was in 2008.  That time I visited some places I had not seen before... the walled, medieval town of Avila, the old university town of Salamanca (this time I got to see more than the train station!), and then down into Extremadura, the region that borders Portugal.  There I saw the cities of Cáceres, Trujillo, and Mérida (the namesake of my frequent destination in Mexico).  I found a certain similarity between Mérida, Spain, and Mérida, Mexico.  They both have a pleasant, relaxed charm, and both are of archaeological interest... Spanish Mérida has Roman ruins, while Mexican Mérida is close to Mayan ruins. 

More recently I took a trip to Madrid  in 2011 to meet my new-found cousin, and again in 2012 when my cousin drove me from Madrid to our ancestral town in Switzerland.  (I previously wrote several posts on the trip.)

I look forward to my upcoming trip to Spain with my sister-in-law.  We will visit Madrid, Segovia and Barcelona, but I will also get to see someplace new, Spain's third largest city, Valencia.  (My sister-in-law is a collector of Lladró figurines, so she wants to visit the Lladró factory outside of Valencia.) 

                                        ¡Viva España!