I love relaxing. My friend Maddie loves exploring. In Martos, we were able to do a little of both, while simultaneously not being able to understand what basically anyone who lived there was saying.

Martos, Spain, is a little country town that not many people have heard of. On TripAdvisor, there is 1 thing to do in Martos, though after staying there for a week, I can tell you that… TripAdvisor is basically right (if you’re looking for tourist attractions).

Of course, I had been doing the “tourist” thing for almost two and a half months before I went to Martos, but something I started valuing during my trip in Europe is that visiting a place is more than just looking at what people to tell you to look at.

Obviously, my co-adventurer and I went to the 1/1 thing to do in Martos, and it was to hike up a steep-hilled street to check out the view from the town’s old castle. I never wrote down the name, but the view… that is something I will never forget: mountains cast shadows across the valley, and the sunset set the sky on fire.

I’m eternally in awe that I was able to witness such beauty every single day that I was in Martos.

Maddie and I were in Martos for about five days, and one of those days was a holiday. It was already a rather interesting adventure to understand what was going on during siesta (uh, why don’t we do that here?), so not knowing about the holiday was additionally baffling.

But, foreign holidays aside, we were eventually able to figure out how to go grocery shopping and experience Spanish supermarkets. Apparently, they weigh your fruit before you go to the cashier, which was weird for Maddie and I at first, but honestly it makes so much sense. We also enjoyed an egregious number of Chupa Chups, and they were phenomenal.

One of the things I really loved in Martos was definitely the people. Most of them looked intensely focused while hiking up the hills that are EVERYWHERE, but when it came to interacting with the folks around town, they were all unbelievably kind and understanding (not always linguistically because language barriers are a thing).

The florist, the Orange store customer service specialist, the pizza guy, the cashier at the grocery store, and the old man walking his dog in the park. These people don’t have many titles in my memory other than these, but they stood out enough for them to change my experience in Martos. None of them did something extra heroic, but in my mind they made a huge difference in how my trip turned out, and are now characters in the stories I tell.

As I sit here and write this post, I realize now how people who play a role in our lives can change our perspective, no matter how big or small their role is. These Spanish strangers, who I will (most likely) never see again, made my trip more pleasant than it could have been.

It’s incredible to me when I see people’s capacity to be kind and compassionate with others. Of course, I don’t think people wake up and go to work with the desire to make others feel bad, but in a world of so much violence and pain, being able to find and acknowledge the good in everyday life is more essential than ever before.

At the time, I’m not sure that I believed my interactions with the locals to be anything necessarily special, but sitting here reflecting on my experience has helped me come to this realisation.

If I’m being completely transparent, I was exhausted by the time I got to Spain. I was homesick from my first trip outside of the United States mentally draining me, and I was incredibly anxious about having to carry my suitcase, backpack, and carry-on to every new place Maddie and I visited.

It was hard to keep my excitement or brainpower at normal levels.

With the combination of Maddie, the wonderful people we met, and things I learned along my journey, Martos was the perfect place to be. It helped me re-shape my appreciation for a beautiful country, and the beautiful calm that came with the small town. No pressures to see some famous museums or endless ancient buildings, but rather the escape from always being plugged in, and the ability to experience a different set of cultural norms in a peaceful environment.

After experiencing the whirlwind of life in Paris and other cities around Europe, Martos was the perfect place to be indeed.