Brothers

Aside from the road trip in Spain, one of the major highlights of the trip was David's (the older brother) communion. Brothers David and Sergio are about 7 years apart and they fight from time to time, but they get along for the most part and have a pretty strong bond.

Sergio

I've been to Spain four times now, and every time we visited, we spent most of the time with family albeit a few day trips here and there. I really haven't travelled around Europe very much, and Spain is my real foray into the region. I love it that this region has so much variety in cultures all packed into one of the smaller continents. I've seen enough road trip movies as a kid to have that idealic impression of a road trip, made famous by the likes of Easy Rider, Smokey and the Bandit, and The Motorcycle Diaries. Even though I have been on many mini road trips around the US, I've never been on a planned one. It was about time I experienced one. So the summer of 2011 we decided to start with Spain - a road trip from the northern tip of Spain in Santander, all the way to the southern coast, to Fuengorila/Malaga, and really see the country from road warriors point of view. I tried to enjoy the places more than take pictures, so there are tons of pictures of places that are missing from this trip, but in essence, we visited 12 towns, in about 7 days. I named this series SN2S 12/7 (Spain, North to South, 12 Towns in 7 Days) to mimic the European car license plates - a fitting name, I thought, if any.

We first start with Santander, which is the regular pit stop every time we visit Spain. We always have a great time when we visit here, and this time was no exception. We start with a picture of Sergio, wearing the Spanish national colors. This is quite fitting to start a picture of a road trip in Spain, I thought, and the bright national colors stands in quite stark contrast on top of the concrete background.

Just Another Tuesday Afternoon

In college, my friend and I used to always talk about success and what defines it - was it money, or the accumulation of assets, or power - we had a lot of theories, but eventually it came down to freedom. Freedom to not have to work, or not have to adhere to any set schedule or routine. After we started working fulltime jobs, this philosophy only got more reaffirmed in our heads. So then the theory was solidified - in very simplistic/laymans/exact terms, success for us is defined as the freedom to go for a long drive in a nice car on a tuesday afternoon at 2pm, and have a beer - any tuesday. Silly? Maybe. Awesome? Absolutely.

So I immediately thought about this when I saw this scene set up for me. I couldn't have set it up better. It was tuesday, around 2pm-ish, and they were sitting there - chilling - and having a beer. Ok, so maybe there were tourists like me, but maybe not. They looked way too familiar to be tourists, but anyway - my college concept was realized in front of me. All I have to do now is to strive for it :)