Call it commitment, call it foolishness, call it exploration. I was about to finish my first two tours as an assistant guide for Rick Steves & had a mega-trip planned with a good friend to visit parts of Spain I’d never seen. Why? To spend all the cash I’d just earned? Because I no longer had an apartment in Seattle? Why not? I was 29 & needed the adventure.
Paula & I met in Cádiz when she studied abroad in 1998-99 & hit it off right away. Back in Seattle we stayed in touch, both of us longing to return to Spain… we had to make that happen! Also if I continued as a tour guide, I needed to know more of the country. So off we went on a five-week journey through mainly the center/north & then dipped down to the Mediterranean… surviving food poisoning, trains without air-con & slippery medieval castle ruins. We thrived on the menú del día back then with its entire bottle of wine on the table. Each.
But first I had to get from Portugal to Spain…
Portugal observations: Color correction for this bunch proved challenging, but I did the best I could. Salema was much less developed back then, & the original Atlântico restaurant served up great food. I’m stunned by the lack of tourists in Óbidos & Lisboa but also remember how I fell in love with the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos… even before restoration & cleaning had begun. That last photo looking toward Praça da Figueira looks like it could be the 1950s!
Spain observations: I shot 11 rolls of film during this month, so only a few of those 368 photos made the cut here, divided in order to make file sizes more manageable. What’s changed? Quite a bit, me included. In Madrid, the Oso y Madroño statue sat in its “temporary” location (from 1986-2009) at the end of Calle del Carmen. A plaque praising Franco outside the Monasterio de las Huelgas in Burgos hopefully is no longer present. Since I’m the opposite of ultra-Catholic & ultra-conservative, I doubt Gaudí would have ever sat by me… but I took the opportunity in Comillas. The Arbol Hijo was still hanging on in Guernica but would pass away in 2004.
Folks in San Sebastián celebrated Gay Pride with a basic poster; they’ve ramped up the graphic design since then. A demonstration in Pamplona calling for amnesty for Basque prisoners would not happen these days; neither would they let the grass grow so much around the Ciudadela. Belchite seemed deserted when we visited except for an enormous amount of flies as well as an older gentleman who wanted to guide us around for some extra cash. What an adventure!
I had such fun hanging out with Paula & learned so much. In the long run, the decision to travel definitely paid off, & I’m thankful I still have the journal written during our trip —a bit of time travel whenever I read it again.
Hope you enjoy this glance at the past. Read about the genesis of this project, & please leave a comment if you remember this particular time & place.
© 2000 Robert Wright. Any copying, usage, or reproduction of the images above requires owner consent.