Traveling and Tourism — Telling the Story of a Trip

When we talk about experiences in Spanish, few topics are richer than travel. A trip has a clear beginning, middle, and end, which makes it the perfect place to practice narrating completed actions in the past. In this lesson you will build the vocabulary of travel and tourism and learn to use the pretérito (simple preterite) to describe what happened during a journey.

Start with the essential nouns. El viaje means "the trip" or "the journey," and el viajero / la viajera is "the traveler." When you plan a trip you might reservar un vuelo (book a flight), hacer las maletas (pack the bags), and alojarse en un hotel (stay in a hotel). At your destination you become un turista (a tourist) who wants conocer new places. Note that conocer in the preterite has a special meaning: Conocí a mucha gen