Memories of Spain, part 1

I thought I would mark the anniversary of my trip to Spain by writing down a few of the memories of the trip. I hope to do one a day for the next two weeks and to illustrate, where possible, with photographs. I don't intend to do a full description, merely to note my year old impressions of a few of the highlights.

The first day was a long one in terms of time but not distance. Margo, Chris and I had had to catch a very early bus to Sevilla from Madrid. We were guided by car driven by a friend through the fairly empty, pre-dawn streets of Madrid to the bus station. We ensconced ourselves in the bus and watched the plains of Spain go by.

It had only been a few days since we had arrived in Spain. I was not fully over the jet lag, so I did something I very rarely do in a moving vehicle: I dozed off. I was jarred awake when the bus started shaking. After a moment of panic, I realized that the bus wasn't going off the road: the shaking was due to irregularities in the road surface. The land had changed during my doze. We were now in a rugged valley that rose into the mountains. This was among the most spectacular sights of our trip. Unfortunately, we neglected to capture them with our cameras. The narrow pass we eventually went through was a favourite of the Spanish woman who shared Margo's seat. Apparently, she traveled this route fairly often and was always impressed by that pass.