This photo was taken Tuesday morning on approach to MAD Suarezz aiprort. But it reminded me so much of arrivng on my first trip to Spain. It was April of 1999. I arrived the day before my mother who was coming from Anna Maria Island (so I assume now that meant Tampa) and I had come from Chicago.
And one from 1999 -
It is strange how some things just stick depsite it being more than a quarter century ago. I remember going to a hotel near the airport and it seemed very rural by comparison to the O'Hare area hotels. But if vague, my distinct recollections of the day were two.
One, the shade for the window in my small hotel room was a complete novelty. It was a metal shade on the outside of the window and it was part way down. I wanted the room dark to sleep and could not figure out how to make it work (no remote! - ah Americans!) I called the front desk and the guy came to my room and showed me that inside the window frame was a wide fabric tape that raised and lowered the shade and when it was fully lowered the room was pitch black. When it was nearly lowered it had small holes in betwen the metal slats theat let in light but kep the room darkened. and it could go up completely and disappear. Fabulous! Still one of the best ways I have seen. Security and shade all in one.
The second was that as we came in to land at the airport I could only think of dotted swiss material as we flew low over fields and fields and fields of olive groves.
Here I will apologize for the antiquated photos: film, rangfinder camera, and then scanned decades later at a high speed scanner company that would do a whole box for a flat rate. (I had 15,000 photosa scanned.) When my mother arrived we got a car and drove to Toledo our first stop. We had planned this trtip for fifteen+ days exploring Andalucia.
my first glimpse of a local procession- this was in Arcos-
