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At 7:30 in the morning of my last day in Spain, alone, with only a dead cell phone, five euros in cash, and two hours of sleep, I board a bus to Granada. I survive to end up six hours later at the Alhambra, a complex of palaces built by the Muslim rulers of fourteenth-century Spain. There, I spend a relaxing afternoon climbing medieval watchtowers at my whim and stopping, often and in lavish gardens, to smell the roses, all in meditative silence - broken only when I ask another tourist to take my photo.
I have some extra time before my bus home, so I decide to visit the city's cathedral, a monument lined inside with sheer white arches and outside with stalls selling baskets of spices - cilantro molido, pimientón dulce. As I enter, a woman grabs my hand and rubs it with lavender, telling me I will be lucky in love. I resist my initial response to brush her off and decide instead to focus on understanding her Spanish. For five euros, she says, she will tell my fortune - now I'm curious.
I have just argued the price of my future down to two euros when a guard appears and chases her away. As he scolds her for what was, apparently, her second infraction today, I tell him it's all right, my tone calculated to let him know I'm not just any gullible tourist but a willing customer. I was being spontaneous! He rolls his eyes and waves me inside.
Stunned, I choose a pew and sit for half an hour.
Traveling alone, I've learned how to fit suitcases into airport bathroom stalls, to make Spanish small talk with taxistas, and to follow my impulses when they'll lead to adventure. In Barcelona, I interview a street performer named Luis who tells me about his Argentine ex-wife as he applies copper face paint. In Seville, I keep my purse underneath me when I sleep alone and al fresco on the roof of my hostel. Back in Madrid, now with a buddy, I take off my shoes to wade in the fountain behind the royal palace; at El Escorial, another palace an hour's train north of the capital, we step over a red velvet rope and sneak past signs forbidding entrance to one stairwell. We are rewarded:
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I am having a great time reading your blogs. Thank you for telling me about it. Uncle Jack and I visited a number of the places you mentioned. Jeni and I had a wonderful week in Barcelona about two years ago. love you. aunt terry