How NOT to Take a Daytrip to Spain (Or: ...And Then I Stepped in Dog Vomit)

This entry is not for the faint of heart. If the title grossed you out, I’d suggest not reading the details below. I debated whether or not to publish this little story, but we’ve all been there in some way or not. Anyway, the necessary ingredients for a disastrous eight hours in Andalusia are as follows:

1. Decide on the spur of the moment to drive to drive an hour and a half into the country.
2. Bring no maps whatsoever. Forget your cell phone and assume that there will be some place to buy camera film, as yours is full.
3. Trust dutifully in your abilities with the Spanish language, ignoring the fact that you only studied it for three semesters and that the Andalusian accent is not exactly the same thing as what you learned.
4. Have limited experience with European roundabouts, and none with big-city European roundabouts.
5. Drive a Fiat.
6. Decide to go into Seville (though unaware of this) on a national holiday weekend when all of Andalusia flocks to the very same place you’re going.
7. In the process of desperately fleeing Seville’s horrific traffic, drive to the resort towns that have, though for one day only, become literal ghost towns because everyone without wooden pegs for legs is in Seville (see #6).
8. Still shaking an hour after leaving the city because you just experienced the worst urban driving conditions in your 23 years of existence, jerk the sunglasses from your face as you walk into a rural Andalusian gas station, lose your grip on them, and accidentally fling them into the toilet. Cuss.
9. In the process of fervently looking for a place that’s not closed to buy a postcard from in said ghost towns, pay no attention to where you’re stepping.
10. After not watching where you’re stepping in said ghost town, take off your sandal and wipe sandal and vomit-saturated foot off on the sidewalk in front of you and on the corner of the building next to you. Realize after the fact that you are in front of the one shop in the city that’s open, and that the shopkeeper’s daughter just watched you desecrate her mother’s shop. Pretend not to hear and walk away as angry Andalusian mother screams at you passionately as she mops up the street.

Okay, so I’m in Portugal at the moment. I love Portugal. I’ll use my next entry to describe it after I get back. I’m only an hour’s drive from the Spanish border, and thought I’d brave a day in Seville, since it’s on the list of cities that I’ve always wanted to see. And to this day, I’ve never actually stepped foot in it, and saw the fabulously golden Moorish palaces that I’ve dreamed of touring for years just long enough to grumble that I’d been looking for a parking space for AN HOUR AND A HALF. That’s right. AN HOUR AND A HALF. Finally, fearing for my life because of the traffic (I would've traded it for a hundred Manhattans) and well aware that my nerves were shot for the rest of the day, I decided to drive back across rugged Andalusia to go to a couple of the beaches on the Spanish side of the border. Little did I know that the whole countryside had closed down. Sure, the whole place seemed straight out of a movie; the horses, white-washed towns, idyllic, limbless pine tress, sun-scorched fields. Maybe one day I’ll come back to it with better memories. I never did find that tourist shop, and didn’t get my postcard or film. All I have to show for my day in Spain is a gasoline receipt and a map of Spain and Portugal that I purchased using broken (!) Spanish at the gas station where I accidentally gave my favorite sun glasses a swirlie. I spent all of today in Portugal on the beach, as I should have done.