Sun and Sunburns

Ever wonder if you can get a sunburn on your scalp? Try shaving your head the day before you go tanning on a sunny Spanish beach and that will give you your answer. I was pretty good about the sunscreen, although I missed some parts of my legs which also burnt, but man the scalp burn hurts. I spent the next couple of days running between the shadows because any time spent in the sun hurt my head. There are some funny pictures of me without a shirt on walking around a Roman aqueduct just to protect my head.

We have left sunny Tarragona, though I must say that is one place I would love to return to at some point, and we are now in Granada. The train trip was yet another long one. We thought we'd save some money and take the night train, but not pay the 25 euros to get a bed, just sleep in the chairs. Big mistake. Not only were there people going in and out all of the time, but I wasn't able to get much sleep at all. You can only do so much in a chair. The train was supposed to leave at 10:30pm and get into Granada at about 9am, but somewhere along the way someone had a medical emergency and we had to stop for an hour and a half to get them into an ambulance. Then some lady slept through her stop and they went backwards to drop her off! So we were delayed 2 hours.

Needless to say we did not arrive in a happy mood. Fortunately the hostel we are staying in is beautiful. It is in the old part of the city of Granada with tiny winding streets. Also, it has a view of the city below and the moutains of the surronding area. There is a rooftop bar/terrace that gives an excellent view. The moutains are so high that in the winter there is actually skiing (futhest south in all of Europe) and even now there are traces of snow on them.

Today we went to Alhambra, the old castle that Granda is famous for and that sits on the highest point of the city. It was beautiful. Nice gardens spread throughout. It was beautiful. Both the Christians and the Muslims both held it at different times, so there is some interesting architecture. The Cathedral here is also huge and really neat. Other than that just walking around the streets here is very interesting.

In Bull related news (it is coming up in couple of weeks) we found out that there are no trains to get us to Pamplona, they have been booked for weeks. Stupid that we didn't think of that. Fortunately, we met 2 girls from California in our hostel who are also going to run and have rented a car. They are also planning to sleep on the street and wouldn't mind 2 handsome and tough (ok...well one handsome and one tough) Canadians to guard them. So we are going to get the car with them in Madrid and the 4 of us are going to roadtrip up to the bulls. Also the car may give us a nice place to sleep. So the plans are set, the run will be on a certain day. Some family members have asked that I not reveal the day so that they will be able to sleep that night, but our flight to London is the 10th of July, so unless we are in a Spanish hospital we plan to be on it.

More blogs to come and more pictures (this internet place won't let me upload them). Not sure yet where we are going tomorrow, but I am sure it will be fun!