I arrived this morning. Perfect weather, about 80 degrees and sunny. My 5 hour bus ride wasn´t all that bad and I managed to sleep for the majority of it. The only negative was that I think I might have been on a field trip. My bus included about 30 Spanish kids that were either in high school or just finished and were all riding here together. Talking and yelling across the bus at 8am. I tend to frown on that behavior, unless of course, it´s me doing the yelling...and usually it is.

I found the "left luggage" location and dropped my bags off a few hours ago. I have already seen a protest against bull fights, millions of people walking around the streets, and apparently, all the stereotypes I have heard about are true. Many foreigners here already, especially English speakers. Loads of Australians around talking about "throwing shrimps on some mythical barbie", Americans talking about world domination and lots of Brits quietly (and very politely I might add) observing events from the background.

Now that I am here though, I have to admit, the idea of sleeping in the park seemed like a much better idea before I actually had to face doing it. Now, not so much. So, at this point, if I don´t want to sleep in the park, I guess I know what I have to do. It looks like I might have to find a ´friend´ for a night or two. But, my guess is they run the hostels and hotels here like they do at Spring Break locations and unless you scale the walls, you ain´t getting in without paying for a room. We´ll see what happens. And judging by my track record...instead of sleeping in a comfortable hostel tonight with a stranger, I will be intoxicated and scaling the walls of a fence somewhere in Bilbao (not too close to here) around 5am.

Tomorrow the festival starts. Thursday the bulls are released. My parents asked me the other day why I wasn´t against the Running of the Bulls if I am against bull fights. Bull fights are completely gruesome. The animals are punished and suffer. But, for about 2-3 minutes for the actual running, they have a chance to dole out some payback. As long as I am not on the receiving end, I completely support their efforts.