Exploring Spain engaged all my senses. My sight recorded charming, old narrow streets; beautiful paintings; surprising landscapes ranging from semi-arid plains to dense, hilly forests; awesome carvings in wood and stone; impressive architecture; unfamiliar tide-pool creatures; Brussels sprout plants; and the large, often light-colored eyes of Spaniards.

I heard many kinds of music: the stomping and clapping of flamenco; folk music I would have previously identified as Celtic and Middle Eastern; classical guitar; the haunting bellow of a flamenco singer resonating off stone buildings and streets; children laughing in city plazas in the summer evening; street musicians; the musical language that surrounded me at cafés; water splashing over stone fountains, busy city traffic; the cheering of a full house in a bullring; and the secretive whisper of wind through dry grass on a hill, reminding me that I stood above strange town in a foreign country on another continent.

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