Introduction to A Traveler's Diary

Welcome to A Traveler’s Diary, my attempt at creating a hypertext.  The primary text (also called "The Diary") has been taken, verbatim, from a journal that I kept when I took a two-week trip to Barcelona, Spain, in March of 1993.  Because this is verbatim, you'll notice some spelling and other grammatical problems, as well as changes in spellings of proper names (the names of people and places).  I decided to keep the "problems" in the text, to provide you, the reader, with a better "flavor" of what the Diary feels like to read.

At the time of my trip I was a student at California State University, Sacramento, majoring in English and History. I was gainfully employed, was living with a man that I almost married, and all in all was leading a fairly average life. But when the opportunity of the trip presented itself, I leapt at the offer. I do not, in anyway, regret my decision to withdraw from school for that semester. Nor do I regret my decision to quit my job (they wouldn’t allow me to take the time off.)

I have designed A Traveler’s Diary so that you can read straight through the text, bypassing all of the hyperlinks, and still get a flavor of what my trip was like. However, I have also included many links to additional information not contained in the original journal. Some of these links are additional comments about what was occurring and others are reflections about the trip from my point of view in 2001. I encourage you to explore the links, as I think they add a level of depth that will make A Traveler’s Diary more enjoyable for you, but the Diary can stand alone, too.

You have five options in reading A Traveler’s Diary:

1. You can read through the original text as it was written, with no outside commentary (or hyperlinks, except to move to the next entry), or

2. You can read through the original text as it was written, complete with the outside commentary (or hyperlinks), or

3. You can read through the original text as it was written, complete with the outside commentary (or hyperlinks), but with the links set-off from the main body of the text, or

4. You can read through the original text as it was written, complete with the outside commentary (or hyperlinks), but with the links denoted by an asterisk (*); or

5. You can read through the original text as it was written, complete with the outside commentary (or hyperlinks) by selecting which journal entries you would like to read through selecting specific dates.

Whichever way, the choice is yours!