On a slow afternoon at work late last September, I came across a sale by British Airlines to various European destinations that all seemed like a really good deals. For instance, a ticket from Seattle to Madrid via London was $484 round trip, and as cheap as that was, I:
a) Don’t live in Seattle.
b) Didn’t particularly want to go to Madrid.
c) Didn’t really have any vacation time.
The only part of Spain that I hadn’t visited was the south. With the exception of Sevilla, the region of Andalucia remained an exotic, sun drenched mystery to me. I looked out the window at a typical autumn day in Portland, cool and crisp, overcast but pleasant. Within weeks the clouds would open up and stay that way for four months. I suddenly imagined myself driving along the rugged southern coast of Spain, on my way from one one gorgeous medieval city to another. For a moment I smelled the salty Mediterranean air and heard the tapping of my shoes on thousand year old cobblestones as I wandered narrow alleys in search of good wine and tapas.
As olive skinned flamenco dancers danced across a stage inside my head, I pulled a credit card out of my pocket and began booking tickets. I decided to leave on a Wednesday afternoon and return the following Tuesday. Like a true junkie, I was fully aware of how poorly I had considered this decision, as well as how little that mattered to me. The vision I’d had was just too strong, as was the prospect of a spontaneous European weekend, which is a fantasy that I suspect a lot of people have and very few ever actually fulfill.
Fifteen minutes after first coming across the tickets, they were purchased. Six weeks later, I was going to be in Spain.
Those six weeks passed quickly, and by the start of November I suddenly realized that, with the exception of a place to stay on my first night in Granada and a rental car the following afternoon, I had failed to do any research or make reservations of any kind. And just after that I thought to myself, so what? I’ve traveled extensively, speak a little Spanish, and love the country intensely.
Not only did I love Spain, I trusted that Spain was going to look out for me while I was there. In fact, I trusted that so much that I decided to see just how light I could travel: I decided go there without any luggage, maps, or guidebooks. Instead, I would arrive there with the clothes on my back, a camera, passport, wallet, toothbrush, and little else. And that’s what I did.
***
Rather than book a single ticket between my departure and destination cities, I courageously (some would say stupidly) worked out the itinerary myself and purchased the three legs of the journey separately: Portland to Seattle, Seattle to London to Madrid, and Madrid to Granada. I gave myself less than two hours of layover time at each stop, but everything went as smooth as I hoped it would.
How did they know?
The flight from Seattle to London was remarkably brief- the pilot capitalized on the geometry of spheres and, by plotting a course over northern Canada and Greenland, it ended up taking a little over nine hours.
There’s a line in the movie Punch Drunk Love when Adam Sandler’s character, having just arrived in Hawaii says, “Wow, it really looks like Hawaii.” It’s a silly line, but that’s exactly how I felt seeing London for the first time in my life- as though I was descending into my own preconceptions of the place as a gray, foggy, dour place, as though the settlers of London had simply sloshed through a muddy field until reaching the river Thames and then said, “Alright, here we are. Start bulding.”
My layover in London was short and sweet: a (imperial!) pint of Bass, a dish of chips with brown sauce, and then I was off again.
British meteorologists have the easiest job in the world.
My first glimpse of my second (really third, I spent a night in Pamplona once) time in Spain.
Upon arriving in Madrid, I was corralled through customs and spent the entire time giddily taking in a seemingly endless parade of idiosyncratic and beautiful Spanish faces. I felt like I was in an Pedro Almodovar film with a cast of thousands.
I had a two and a half hour layover in Madrid, but wasted no time tearing into manchego, jamon, and lomo bocadillos and quaffing three (or was it four?) copas of delicious Tempranillo.
Just like the hopper flight between Portland and Seattle, the flight from Madrid to Granada took less than an hour. Granada’s airport is tiny. I walked from the landing strip to the terminal and then directly outside to a waiting city bus.
Not having any maps or knowledge of the city forced me to rely almost entirely on the goodwill of strangers. I knew that my hotel was located on the “Plaza de Campos”, which I explained to the bus driver. He didn’t seem to know exactly where that was, but had an idea as to which part of town it was in. When we arrived there, he let me know.
Once on the sidewalk, I followed his pointed finger across the street and down a dimly lit alley. Then I crossed a parklike pair of streets, took a right, then a left, then a right, down another dark alley that opened up on a small treed square. I looked to my side and suddenly realized that I was standing next to the hotel where I’d booked my first night. I smiled. That was almost too easy.
The room was modest but very clean, and had a beautiful view overlooking the city. As exhausted as I was from traveling for 24 hours straight, this was to be my only night in Granada and I didn’t feel right about not seeing at least a glimpse of it. And so, after taking a long shower and refamiliarizing myself with late night Spanish television (3 channels of music videos, 5 channels of live fortune tellers, 1 channel of a live lottery game that doesn’t make any sense, and 2 channels of hardcore pornography), I got dressed and set out again.
It was a short walk down Calle Reyes Católicos to the Plaza Nueva, which I knew to be my best bet on a Thursday night for a taste of Granada. Once there, I ducked into the first bar that looked promising and ordered a glass of red wine. After it arrived I spent a moment trying to convince myself that I was really there, drinking Spanish wine not far from where it was made, and looking forward to… well, what was I looking forward to? The next four days were still a mystery, a mystery that could only be solved by experiencing whatever was in store.
After leaving that bar I became aware that all of the wine and tapas places were closing for the night, and that only nightclubs would be open. I went into one place called Gustav Klimt, which I took as a good sign until I realized what sort of place it was- loud, dark, and packed with an assortment of attractive young people, most of whom would be going home alone. In other words, it was a college bar. Rather than waste money on an overpriced, watered down drink, I snagged a chocolate covered fruit skewer and made a sneering exit.
No one noticed.
Granada is a college town, and the alleys around the Plaza Nueva were filled with groups of friends and students winding their way from one place to another. Since I had nothing else to do, I began walking with them. Rather than follow any one group I drifted between them like so many schools of interesting Spanish fish.
When I tired of that, I began to walk home. Along the way I came upon the ongoing drama of an accident involving a car and a scooter. A young woman was laying on the ground and howling with an intensity that did not appear to be appropriate given the fact that she wasn’t bleeding and the paramedics were not rushing to get her into the ambulance.
Maybe she was just imitating a Spanish soccer player.
Continuing on, I walked back the way I’d come and then realized I’d gone too far. Instead of turning around, I cut across the neighborhood where I thought I was staying in an attempt to repeat my earlier success of guessing my way back to the hotel. But this led me to another main street, and then another, and soon it was two a.m. and I had absolutely no idea where I was. Eventually I stopped into an all night convenience store, but the Turkish clerk there had only lived in Spain for a month and was little help. The Korean immigrants running the all night convenience store next to the first one didn’t know either. I thanked them both and continued on.
Eventually I ran into Peter, an exchange student from Boston who was heading towards the Plaza Nueva along with his friends. I figured that returning there was better than wandering aimlessly, and so I joined their group for a few minutes and chatted with them. As we walked it became apparent to me just how far I’d gone. My hotel was in the southeast part of the city, but I met up with the Americans far in the northwest. Still, I’d probably seen more of the city in one evening than many people see in a week, and never felt endangered by being lost, only confused.
Peter didn’t know where I was trying to go, but he did point me in roughly the right direction, and finally, finally, I found myself at the Plaza de Campos and my hotel. Having been awake for the majority of the last two days I wanted nothing more than to sleep deep for as long as my body felt like sleeping, but that was not possible. At seven a.m. I’d need to rise and leave again, this time to explore the fortress palace of the Alhambra and the rest of Granada. At times like these, an old quote by Henry Rollins always comes to mind, and it certainly applied then:
“Sleep is for lightweights.”