Why I travel

PHOTOGRAPHING ONE OF THREE APSES OF THE CONVENTO DE SANTA MARÍA DE MAVE, IN PALENCIA PROVINCE, SPAIN Juan Solís, 58, a civil engineer from Madrid, March 19, 2009. “I like to travel for three fundamental reasons: first, to get to know the culture of the place — meeting people, learning how they live, what they do, what they think, what their worries are. Second is the history of the place. And third is architecture, sculpture and art. Palencia is one of the provinces with the most Romanesque churches in Spain. My friends, my wife and I did the same route in 1993, but we wanted to do it again. Each church requires time — to speak with the people there about the architecture and sculptural details, how they maintain them. There may be one foreign tourist or another, but mostly it’s domestic. For Americans to come, they’d have to be cultured. I don’t want to offend anybody, but this is not beach tourism or traveling to a grand cathedral like Notre Dame de Paris. It’s for people who like medieval art and history.”
As told to Seth Kugel
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/06/07/travel/20090607_WHY_slideshow_8.html