ROUTES · ANDALUSIA, SPAIN
The slow road to the coast
The stops between the stops, where the coast road earns its extra three hours.
Fast is a way of not being somewhere. Sometimes the point is the in-between.
I could have taken the fast train. I took the bus that stops in every white town on the way down, and I have thought about that afternoon more than the beach it delivered me to.
You lose three hours. You gain a dozen places you would never have chosen and will never forget: a plaza at siesta, a bakery that only a bus would ever bring you to, an old man who told me which town to get off in for lunch. He was right.
When to take the long way
When arrival is not the only point. When you have the afternoon. When the route itself is somewhere you want to be, not just a line between two places you have already decided matter.
The fastest way between two places is the surest way to see neither of them.
Been somewhere that changed how you travel? Tell us about it.