Pamplona!!

Bulls, alcohol, red scarfs, alcohol, red neckties, alcohol, white clothes, alcohol - this basically sums up the San Fermin festival in Pamplona, more commonly known as the Running of the Bulls. I had thought that it would mainly be centered around the bull run, with some other stuff on the side, but the bull run could be seen as an event on the side - there is just so much going on every second of the day!

We had planned to get to Pamplona by train at about 1am on the 10th of July, rest in a park, and then get up early for the bull run the following day. However, while eating dinner in Hendaye on the French side of the border we saw a bus that looked like it was heading to Pamplona at about 7pm - racing over we chucked our bags in the boot, paid the much cheaper fare, and got to Pamplona just under two hours later in time for all the fun! Left luggage was a ridiculously cheap 3.50€ so we partied for a while, getting all kitted up with the right gears (check out the photos here), until we found a cosy possie in the park for a few hours sleep.

They had said that to get a good viewing position you needed to be there about two hours in advance - pish we thought - but they were right. I still managed to get some good photos through other people´s legs though! Adrian will ball you up in the corner when you next see him with his version of the run...

That night we headed out to Estella ("Stella!!! Stella!!!") to our campsite we had reserved literally months in advance thinking that any and all accommodation would be completely booked out. What we hadn´t realised was exactly how far 45km out of the city was... But it had a great pool and we relaxed heartily in preparation for day two of our San Fermin adventure the following day.

Back in the city we checked out some more fireworks (video to come), followed some more marching bands, walked through some markets, and (best of all) went to the fun fair! Dodgems and candy floss are such a good combination...

We had planned on doing the whole sleeping out thing again, and I was a bit concerned about the fact it had started to rain, but then we met some locals and the whole night changed. Oscar, Vanessa and Benjamin were Pamplona locals who had never done the bull run ("much, much too dangerous"! They obviously only considered ´really´doing it if you were practically guaranteed a hospital stay), but went out religiously every night to paaaaaar-tay! They were heaps of fun, so friendly, and took us to the most crowded locals bars (known as penas) you could ever imagine. They also showed us the local´s drink: red wine and coca cola...go on, give it a nudge!

We ended up staying out all night and because we couldn´t find a spot to watch the run the following day, Adrian convinced me to actually run it... We arrived so far in front of the bulls into the ring we got booed. So no, not close to the action at all! (And wouldn´t probably go so far as to say I ´ran´ it either...)

So after all the excitement we got our weary bodies onto a bus and headed back to France. We are clearly getting old because that one night of missed sleep meant we went to bed at 4pm that next day and didn´t wake up until about 9am... Ok, Adrian has just informed me that it was actually more like 30 hours without sleep so maybe we can keep our reputations intact, just this time though.