Home. Granada.

"I'm walkin' through the summer nights, the jukebox playing low, yesterday everything was goin' too fast, today it's movin' too slow" - Dylan,

There is too much to say at this point about the last few days, and I don't want this blog to get repetitious, so I will give some highlights and describe where I am now living. First, today is Sunday. Saturday was an incredible day, and so was Friday.


On Friday we left Madrid and began the trip to Granada. Along the way we stopped in Toledo, and took a tour of the city. Toledo is an amazing city. It was the former capital of Spain, before Madrid, and it is really a great place. I have many photos from Toledo, but basically it is surrounded by a river on three sides, and it is located up on a hill, which is why the Romans first inhabited it. Toledo.
We left Toledo after a few hours of visiting, but I am sure that I will go back sometime in the future. The trip from Toledo to Granada was a long one, at about four hours. Along the way we passed through Castilla de La Mancha, the home of Don Quixote. Spain is a pretty place, I don't think it gets enough credit for that. We went over many mountains and flat plains as we headed south. Finally we passed over the last set of large mountains, and an area filled with olive tree after olive tree and we reached Granada. Granada. Everything I imagined. There are mountains, to the north, south, east, and west. To the North, East and South the mountains are within a few miles, 5 maybe. Granada. We got off the bus in Granada and I was really nervous to meet my host mom, but she was great. She doesn't speak English, but why do I need to speak English anyways. Although my Spanish is really rusty at this point, I look forward to the future when she and I can speak without fragmentation. Our apartment is on the seventh floor, it is really nice and on the north side of the city. What really surprises me about the area where we live is that although we are really far from the city center, our block for example has five or six restaurants and bars.

Enough about where I live. Yesterday was incredible. The beginning to Spain's version of the Tour de France was in Granada. La Vuelta a Espana as it is called is a really big deal, I knew that it was in Granada in May probably, but still I was not prepared for how big it would be. I loved it. I probably walked seven miles yesterday around the city, because I thought the race was starting around 2, when it really started at 7. Something got lost in translation there. It was fine though because I learned the streets. During the stage I saw some people jumping a fence and going to a roped off area just for the cyclists and their friends. Well, after a quick debate in my head, I decided to make the jump as well. For the next hour I was next to some of the best cyclists in the world as they warmed up for the time trial wishing them good luck, and trying not to be as big a bother as some of the people around me were to them.


It was great. I dont know what I can do that will top it. I know this was long, but I had alot to cover, hopefully I will figure out a way to not describe as much in the future, but until then you are stuck reading all of it. PS. I have an online photo area on Picasa. Here is the link. http://picasaweb.google.com/baxterburnworth