Full cognizance escapes my jet-lagged brain, but my liberated mind registers all the color from the passing multitude of beautiful women and handsome men like the fanning of a 64-count box of Crayolas.

Several bull fighters are staying in our hotel.  Where to eat? How far is the Prado Museum?  How wonderful it is to hold the arm of my husband while we stride leisurely, a world away from jobs and crazy schedules. Much to absorb. Yet all l I can think about are my hunger pains.

Catching glimpses of the colorful scarf around my shoulders as my head turns back and forth has a magical effect. The soft swish of silk beautifully accompanies the Madrileños charming trill. The last year of freelance writing has negatively affected my dress habits. I packed for this trip with a strict departure from my daily wardrobe of jeans and t-shirts.

Still a bit tired from the flight from the U.S. and the hectic schedule prior to departure, we wandered back to the rooftop lounge of the Midnight Rose, the restaurant in our hotel. Black Mojitos, saffron and shrimp croquettes and steamed brioche filled with buffalo mozzarella and truffles, soothed our hunger pains and staged a short-lived but energetic second wind.

The hotel in Madrid, ME Madrid.

The scarf I imagined wearing on the rooftop lounge

The Fuzzy Slipper Travel Chronicles © is a series I began to give life to a trip to Spain/Morocco that was recently canceled. To interject your own ideas about what I should imagine seeing or doing during this trip, send me an email!  If you’d like to join me on this trip of traveling fiction, subscribe to a RSS feed here.

No one can say who started the whole travel-from-home-to-the-grandest-of-destinations idea (the first human that realized there was a continuance of land beyond the river’s bend, I’d guess).  Henry David Thoreau wrote tomes about exploration, never venturing far from Walden. Gustave Flaubert dreamt of the grit filled warmth of Egypt well before he actually ventured there. He was disappointed, I might add, with reality, as has been many a traveler upon physically landing at their fantasy destination.

From the comfort of houseslippers and a favorite robe, our imaginations can operate like the transporter in a galaxy class starship, or better yet, the Holideck (virtual reality on steroids). Disappointment is impossible – unless you care to program that in. I don’t.

To celebrate our imagination and the capacity it holds within to take us without, The Fuzzy Slipper Travel Chronicles © will begin with the trip to Spain/Morocco that was recently canceled.  I plan to vicariously live those 15 days through picture and guide books from the downtown library.

Travel fiction? Indeed.  Roused by the fireflies in my backyard and the sparks now being coaxed from the logs ablaze in the firepit, it is the best time of year to dream.  Don’t you agree?

I’ll be posting The Fuzzy Slipper Travel Chronicles © : Spain/Morocco over the next couple of weeks. If you’d like to subscribe to this travel fiction series, click here for a RSS feed.