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.
above- tape shown to the left of the window.
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.
We spent two nights here overlooking the city from the parador. We took a cab into the city to explore the sites. Then we headed to Ubeda for the Parador (we only styed in Paradors on this trip.) We went to a number of pueblas blancos and stopped in Ronda, Arcos de la Frontera, Carmona, Cordoba, Granada (where we stayed in the Alhambra) and finally a number of days in Madrid.
Our trip had its challenging moments mostly due to the fact that my extremly recent Michelin Road map was out of date as they had literally a month before renumberd all the roads to coordinate with their EU status. LOL So we relied upon roundabouts with "direction to X" as our route LOL
Some photos from long long ago- with captions if I can figure out where we were.
The view from our room in the parador in Arcos de la Frontera
Quite possibly Sevilla but could be Carmona, or Arcos- LOL
The Adriatico Building (which is right across the street from my current bank in Spain!)
The Giralda in Sevilla - nearly 20 years ago-
The Plaza in front of the Alcazar - I loved the Alcazar and Sevilla so much I decided to go to Morocco the very next year.
View of the bull ring in Sevilla from thje top of the Giralda. We live just off the lower right hand corner of the picture now. Such a strange thing and I so wish my mother could see us now - she would be totally in love with the choices we have made to move to Spain.
Pictures from my first visit to the Mezquite in Cordoba
oru room was in this courtyard of the convento (now parador) of the Alhambra-
Ubeda (and Jaen - which we did from Ubeda)
my first glimpse of a local procession- this was in Arcos-
A few from Madrid
It was a great trip and one of the last ones where my mother was in good enough health to fully participate. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in the later part of 1999 and never went to Morocco with me (she had been before.) Although she lived another ten years her health got worse. In 2002 we took a trip to the Baltics with my Aunt - just we three - and she fell and things got wosre. But she rallied and came on my first Croatia trip with me (brought my Aunt as her roomate and helper) but that was 2005 and after that I think she only did river cruises in North America. Other than China (in 1987) she never saw Asia and she never got to South America but she still (for her cohort) was an intrepid explroer.
I became a better photographer because that way she could "go" on the trips with me, as I continued my travels. And when she died, I scattered her ashes for years in countries she had never visited, as a way for her to keep on exploring the world. 💔💝
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