Category: Valencia

Jan 29, 1963

1/29/2011

Louie, the car, packed and ready to go

We got up early and packed the car.

Drove first to Tibidabo. Really a beautiful place but the view of the city wasn’t good because it was too smoggy. Then headed for Valencia via Tarragonia. The drive was beautiful – mostly along the sea with its lovely beaches.

rock wall and donkey powered well

Most of the near 300 kilometers we drove through orange and olive groves. The land in this area is very rocky. To clear it, they pick the rocks up by hand and stack them like fences. For every car or truck on the highway we saw at least 3 or 4 horse drawn wagons. Even Barcelona (1.5 million) has few cars – mostly taxis. Arrived in Valencia and finally ended up at the Hotel Bristol.

0 Comments

A daily diary of a journey in 1962. Please post comments about where you were then on the Background page.

Currency Converter

1962 was pivotal. This is the background:

It was a year colored by the Cuban Missile Crisis, an escalating involvement in Vietnam, the Berlin Wall and the Cold War with Russia, Civil Rights issues, a nascent space program, Nelson Mandela in prison, Betty Friedan's, The Feminist Mystique, the Beatles, Rolling Stones and the death of Marilyn Monroe.

In the face of all of this, Pat, Judy and I blithely took off for Europe with the intention of traveling through Europe and North Africa until our money ran out. We had a travel guide and a book titled Europe on $5.00 a Day. Since we had all read The Ugly American in preparation for the trip, we thought we were very smart to buy a used Volkswagen with Dutch license plates. We dubbed the car "Louie" since a cute guy from Switzerland named Louie had helped us acquire it.

There was no such thing as a cell phone, a computer, Twitter or Facebook. Our parents didn't hear from us for weeks on end. We wrote regularly, but letters took forever to deliver and we only vaguely knew where we would be next. It was a very cold winter and we followed the sun.

Jan 29, 1963

1962 was pivotal. This is the background:

Archives

Categories