How did your parents travel?
It seems like a millennium has passed since we used throwaway cameras , we proudly wore canteens, supermarket caps and paper maps… oh, those times when being a tourist was well seen!
In a matter of forty years we have gone from traveling in the Seat with the whole family, to practically making no trips with them and, until we left alone in the world and alone in the world... but connected to mobile , that new companion of the millennial generation from which we do not separate, much less to travel.
But there was a time when people dared - yes, dared - to travel without mobile , GPS, or anything that would locate them without going into shock. Nor did they care much if they wore a different look for each day, something comfortable was enough to spend the holidays happily. Those daring were our fathers and mothers.
In New Orleans there is always jazz.
THE NEW ORLEANS OF OUR LIVES
It was in March 1998 that Ramón and María Cristina, Galician travelers, flew to New Orleans. As they say, it was not a destination that was on the Spanish radar in the 90's but it ended up being the trip of their lives thanks to your company.
“How multicultural the city was, the great African, Spanish, French and Latin American influence. Also the landscapes, those immense plains, the infinite cotton and sugar plantations, and of course, jazz”, they say.
The route was immortalized forever with his German camera, a ROLEY 35T the size of a packet of tobacco perfect for traveling and inseparable during all those years. “The photos were, after the culture and the visits, the most important thing to remember and relive those moments. In our house there are infinite Photo albums , of family parties, of everyday moments but, above all, of the summer travel . There are out of focus (many), out of square (many) ... but they all keep a memory even if they are not perfect, "they add.
And that's how they portrayed a New Orleans that sounded like jazz incessantly, as they toured the Mississippi on a 19th century ship where there was no lack of creole food and music, as they discovered the replica of the Tara plantation of gone With the Wind and the lafayette cemetery , "pure gothic, so impressive...".
In short, the other side of the american life and an energetic and vibrant New Orleans before it was devastated by the Hurricane Katrina.
Car trips were the most popular.
WHAT WAS NEVER MISSING WAS...
It is impossible to erase from memory those eternal trips by car (no plane: one a year and with luck) and, of course, with the Michelin Guide ! If there was something that was not missing in the traveler kit of our parents were red 990 map of Spain and the green guide of tourist and cultural curiosities . How to forget that map that had its own life and with it you could get to Australia if necessary.
"At the beginning of the 80's We were traveling without a mobile phone, without internet, without a browser, without air conditioning, but with Michelin tires, our maps and guides that excited us from the first moment”, José Benito Lamas, Chief Inspector of the Michelin Guide, explains to Traveler.es.
Since 1973 they have been doing spain maps and the world, each year updated with the best routes, hotels, restaurants; in the 80s and 90s, yes, more aimed at families. By 1,250 pesetas you got one Michelin Guide and, for 325 pesetas, with the map of Spain.
“The most demanded routes were those of the Madrid-Catalonia and Madrid-Basque Country axis, and the most sought-after maps were those of Spain-Portugal and France”, underlines José. The Michelin Guide has not ceased to be in our lives, although now much more in digital format. In 1997, 630,000 maps were sold, while in 2017, 425,000 copies.
Paris in the 90s.
HE WAS GOING TO PARIS BY TRAIN
For Frank Babinger, geographer and professor of Tourism at the Faculty of Commerce and Tourism of the UCM, what has changed the most has been the infrastructure and the quality of the means with which we travel. Well, and the number of travelers, "we have gone from 300 million in 1980 to 1,300 million today," he says.
“Today any car has higher quality and more equipment than the luxury cars then. A Seat Ibiza It has better finishes than a Mercedes then. Aircraft were also other models that have nothing to do with what we have today”, and he adds that the ones that have perhaps undergone the least changes have been ferries, since cruise ships practically did not exist.
And to Paris, he went by train, of course. In 1991, it was when Carol and Martín decided to travel to the city of love doing it accompanied by his group of neighbors and inseparable friends (there was a time when we related to the neighbors, that's right). “Since we had so much fun at the parties we organized at home, we decided to share our joy with the French. we caught a Talgo who did the route Barcelona- Paris . Already on the train we started the party, we had dinner: potato omelette, pa amb tomàquet, and of course, a bottle of Juve i Camps”, says Carolina euphorically.
They visited the Eiffel Tower , the Elysian Fields , the invalids , the Galleries Lafayette Y Versailles . And some anecdotes from that Paris of the 90s? The taxi drivers who wanted to take advantage, the salads without oil and salt... "The memories of that trip are really great, because not everything was as prepared as now, you went a little to what you wanted", she recalls sympathetically.
THE AGENCIES, THOSE TRAVEL COMPANIONS
The agencies were the most popular of the time, they rarely made trips outside of Spain without resorting to their services. Susana and Santi organized their Honeymoon in India with one of them. "Back then it wasn't a typical destination like Honeymoon , but we find in India a cocktail of emotions that go beyond the romanticism of Paris, Caribbean 2x1 that was already beginning to take hold and that all the agencies recommended to us, ”she explains.
And it was India, and for almost one million pesetas , a waste that made them feel like authentic maharajahs. "It was in 1999, before the world ended (remember that in 2000 all computer systems would stop working and the world would collapse ...)", she laughs.
An exciting month for an adventure where there was no shortage of guides, hotels, meals, transfers, since everything was arranged.
“We remember a lot about our indian Guide, a sikh from the region of Punjab , a spiritual warrior who continually complained that we didn't pay attention to things because we were wasting time photographing them. What would he say now if he saw us 24 hours a day with his cell phone?!” says Susana.
Ignoring the Sikh, they photographed a culture shock with which they fell in love, because they say that India either horrifies you or makes you fall in love. "We had a reflex camera of my husband's father, who weighed an awful lot and was seen by Indian children from miles away. Buying reels there was almost impossible and every time we stopped in a big city, New Delhi For example, we ran out of stock!”
After that came many other trips, however they never forget India. Possibly in their 25 years of marriage they will return, although surely (they say), they will leave the mobile at home.
Hitchhiking today? Impossible!
ROAD AND BLANKET
Our parents did not travel every Weekend to make an escapade, that was for the rich. Everything was reduced to once a year, at Christmas , to holy Week or to summer . “The time when the big newspapers opened their August editions with the Gran Vía or the Castellana empty is over. In Paris, cars were not charged for parking in August because it was not profitable, there was nobody there!”, Frank Babinger, geographer and professor of Tourism at the Faculty of Commerce and Tourism of the UCM, tells Traveler.es.
Of the eternal days of Sun and beach , and of the summer afternoons in the village picnic areas , we have started looking for extraordinary experiences, trips (sometimes exhausting), hiking trails, sustainable tourism , etc. Because one of the big differences between our parents and us is that we we don't want to be tourists , we want to go unnoticed and we are not satisfied with spending a weekend, but we choose to stay for months, even years.
"There was no airbnb and the like, although we did look at the balconies in search of apartments for rent in summer . People weren't looking to live like the locals, or even meet them: we weren't anthropologists, we were tourists," Frank details.
What about **hitchhiking**? Before it was common, today almost a suicide. Angels, painter and adventurer, had thus traveled the Canary Islands and Portugal. On the second trip, the car left them stranded and it was not surprising... "We were going to Estoril, a beach town in Portugal, four adults with two two-year-old boys, a nine-year-old girl, cribs, strollers, a boat for the beach, and all in one Seat 121. There our car broke down and we hitchhiked. We were stopped by a car racer who was with his mechanic and he fixed it for us, "he recalls.
All that innocence dissipated in the fall of '92 with the terrible crime of the Alcásser girls, since then hitchhiking began to be seen as a recklessness only suitable for american movies.
Where did you travel in the summer?
And as I said Miguel Rios in the bus blues you lived on the road and at the pace of the day. The time of arrival did not matter, what mattered was the route because he traveled slowly .“We used to choose a destination for one or two weeks, and we would leave two or three days before, marking a route to go and another to return, to go along two different paths. That way we knew everything that was on the way”, say Ramón and María Cristina, the travelers from New Orleans.
On their journey from Galicia to Alicante, they stopped at the Valley of the Fallen, the dump , they spent the night there, continued until Alcala de Henares They went back to sleep and finally arrived in Alicante where they would spend 10 to 15 days. And around Jaén, Albacete, Segovia... trips to Spain They were like that, improvised. “As night approached, we saw the next town or city and with the Michelin Guide We chose a hotel, according to the quality and price, we arrived and to sleep! When we arrived at the destination, we moved by word of mouth, asking the neighbors," explains the Galician couple.
The trips were long, uncomfortable and back roads . These were the great beneficiaries, since they had a network of restaurants, cafeterias and picnic areas where they could stop for lunch, and how good those lunches tasted! chorizo tortillas !
Blessed are those summers of watermelons and melons!