Monday October 29, some 20 hours after we boarded the overcrowded train in Benicarlo it finally arrived in Granada. We had spent the last couple hours sharing a compartment with two of our backpacker cohort, American guys like us headed for this beautiful old city nestled in the hills of the south of the country. When we got to our destination they headed off in their own direction, it was just Steve and I.
Spain continued to be true to its billing as heaven for thrifty travellers. We bought delicious freshly baked pastries at a storefront bakery for just five pesetas each, which was just ten cents U.S. Dinner with Paella, real steak, and wine for just 110 pesetas ($2 U.S.) And finally the hotel room, with two beds, tile floor and a small balcony with a stone railing and a great view of the Alhambra on the hill across town, just 160 pesetas ($3 U.S.) Real easy to eat well and sleep in nice lodgings and still stay close to that six dollars a day budget! So we were living relatively high on the hog for a while, including a bottle of wine with most non-breakfast meals. We spent the rest of the day doing nuts and bolts things like buying groceries, cashing traveler’s checks, washing some clothes (we actually found a laundromat this time), and writing and mailing postcards. These things, in a foreign land where you don’t speak the language, often turned into a logistical challenge that took all day.
Thursday October 25 was our last morning in Barcelona. The sun pushed its way through the narrow window of our room in the little pension, inspiring us to get up early and enjoy getting out in its bounty of heat and illumination one last time in our beautiful old Gothic Quarter neighborhood of bricks and stone. Our plan was to try to hitchhike south to Granada. If I had been traveling on my own I would have used my rail pass to take the train, but Steve did not have one, and he wanted to avoid the expense of the train if at all possible given his limited funds. I certainly appreciated that, having very limited funds myself, beyond that key asset of the pass. To have a continuing travel partner, at least for now, I was happy to go with the flow, whatever the universe presented as the way forward.
It was mid afternoon on Monday October 22 when Zo and Randall’s beat up old VW van, having survived the thorough going over by Spanish customs, finally entered the eastern port city of Barcelona, my travel partner Steve’s and my destination. Our hosts for the journey had picked us up about 100 kilometers south of Paris and given us the longest single ride I had had to date hitchhiking. With lots of hugs and emotion, our two fellow traveler hippieesque Canadians parted company with us there, with their plan to continue down the coast to the south of Spain for an intended crossing over to Morocco in North Africa. 
So Sunday morning October 21, Steve and I hoisted our packs and walked from the Rue Titon hostel to the main highway that headed out of Paris south towards Lyon, and stuck out our thumbs. I was a bit wistful to leave Giselle and her striking daughter Laurence behind, but was happy to have my new travel partner at my side. He seemed a good companion, a bit more extroverted than me, smart, funny and even-keeled, and all with low ego. I hadn’t seen him have the bouts of moodiness and withdrawal that had overtaken my last travel partner Jack.
It was Friday October 18, a long month into my odyssey and finally a gorgeous fall day after too much cold and rain over the past couple weeks. It never ceased to amaze me how much Mother Nature and her climatic moods influenced, even controlled, my own. A sunny day could assuage a lot. From atop the cupola of Sacre Coeur, I looked down at central Paris, my loneliness also medicated somewhat by the previous evening spent with Giselle, Paul and the stunning Laurence. Just somewhat.
It was Wednesday October 10 1973 and I was headed to Mainz to take a boat up the Rhine river. I was thinking “up” because the boat would head north, but north was the direction of the river flow to the ocean so I guess it was technically “down” the river. I was due to meet my mom’s friend Giselle in Paris in six days and I decided in the interest of time that I would pass on exploring the Black Forest for now. My new plan was to spend a few days touring the great historic river, which separated France from Germany. The river that Patton’s army breached in World War II with my dad as an artillery platoon leader, and that I had done a report on in sixth grade with ample assistance from my dad. A couple of my fellow young backpackers that I had spent the night with in the Bern train station had suggested that the sightseeing boat rides on the Rhine and then the Moselle were spectacular.
