Once upon a time, the distinction between tourist and traveler seemed mightily important to me, though it does not much any more, as oafs and boors and sensitive folk can be found in either camp, and we all ought be the sort upon whom nothing -- even tourism -- is wasted. And in any event, I once went a’touristing myself, in the long-ago year of 1964, when my wife and I went to Spain:
It seemed like all the Beautiful People were going to Spain that year, or had been there the year before. We had just been married that autumn and this would be our first summer. I would finish my first year of law school at Northwestern and she would be on summer break from teaching at the Chicago campus of the University of Illinois, and we read the New Yorker and Holiday and who knows what other glossy, upscale magazines and were aspiring Yuppies, avant la lettre.
We bought guidebooks. In Frommer’s $5-a-Day guide to Spain we were delighted to read in the introduction that he thought you could do Spain quite well on $3 a day.
And of course we had both read Hemingway.
The story continues in similar open-faced innocence by clicking on “Spain, 1964,” somewhere in the upper righthand corner of this page.
Thanks for your comments on my family posts. I wish my ancestors from the Civil War and Revolutionary War had written accounts of their experiences. My great-granddaddy's brother has a small diary from WW I, in which there is a large gap after which he was back in England in a hospital after having been gassed.
ReplyDeleteI haven't looked this week at my "following posts" as things have been so busy. I will also add you to my blog roll (which I look at a lot more frequently) and look forward to reading more about your experiences in Spain.