The Spain Stack

I spent about an hour today with the Spain stack, a pile of travel guides and a map that reflect the itinerary of a trip to Spain that we have planned for the month of May. You can see the green tabs sticking out from the second guidebook in the stack, all evidence that so far I have been able to cross reference the printed itinerary with one of the guidebooks.

Spain will be a new adventure for both Ed and me. I'm already finding that the place names (Toledo, Guadalajara, Madrid) reflect places in North America, and that the architecture will be exciting (La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, for instance.) Words and names in the guidebooks waken old classroom learnings -- El Greco, Guggenheim, Gaudi, Basques, Segovia -- and beg for more discovery.

So much of the fun of travel is in the anticipation. The Spain stack is already proving engaging. We will be traveling with J. Michael Barone of Pipedreams fame. Many of you will remember last May's blog posts from Great Britain as we roamed southern England, listening to pipe organs in cathedrals and churches and town halls with Michael and company.

While the guidebooks can picture the places in Spain like Madrid, Barcelona, Lerma, Burgos, and Toledo, I am left to imagine the sound of pipe organ after pipe organ swelling, crescendoing, and whispering, and all of this music happening in incredible spaces and places.

The sights, the sounds, the tastes -- all of that lies ahead and is now piled and folded together in the Spain stack with its little green stickers waiting for May.


Copyright 2013
Wanda Hayes Eichler