Pamplona: Not a Good Place to be If You're a Bull

I was going to title this one ‘Into the Madness: The Story of Pamplona,’ but after the bull fights Bill recommended this one that just seemed to fit. We went to Pamplona in time for the first day of the San Fermin festival, which honors some saint I’m not aware of with drinking a lot and killing bulls.

I’ll start at the beginning. Bill and I stayed just outside the city center and took a bus in on the first day of the festival. We wandered around a small area where the bus dropped us off and found some food that is native to the area, as well as some shops where we could buy the appropriate clothing (white shirt, white pants, red scarf, red sash). I thought to myself, ‘how lovely, this isn’t at all as crazy as I expected.’ Then we crossed the street.

Across the street and down an alley or two, we realized what we were in for. Crowds of people cluttered the narrow streets, all of them purple from being doused with sangria, which is apparently the thing to do. It’s actually so acceptable that when people dump buckets of it from balconies onto the masses no one really minds. All through the streets it was the same thing, people everywhere, wet with sangria, giggling like idiots. It was wonderful.

We ended up in a square where there was a little more room to breathe, and met some other travelers that we ended up hanging out with most of the night. Of course, Bill and I wanted to take part in the traditions of the festival, so we got some sangria, and before long we were involuntarily showered with purple by our new friends. It was a really fun night, but only until I realized I had been pickpocketed. Someone took off with my wallet, which totally sucks, but could’ve been worse. Moving on...

We got up nice and early the next morning to see the running of the bulls at 8am sharp. We left our hotel around 7, and reached the run at about 7:45. Unfortunately we were too late to get a good spot, but Bill held me on his shoulders, and I was able to see the back of one of the bulls. It was pretty anticlimactic.

The second day of the festival was much quieter, in fact, as we wandered away from the run there were people asleep all over the city. During the festival everything everywhere is closed besides liquor stores. There are no restaurants, no clothing stores, no grocery stores, nothing. It’s almost as if everyone just closes up shop and gets out of town. We were lucky enough to come upon some awesome paella though, so that kept us busy most of our second day in Pamplona.

That evening we got our tickets to the bull fights for the following night. We were pooped from a long day of eating and standing around so we decided to go to bed early and get up in time for the running of the bulls on the following day.

This next morning we were out of the hotel by 6:30 and made it to the run nice and early. There wasn’t much of a crowd, and Bill let me sit on his shoulders once again, so I got a decent look at the run this time. It was again pretty anticlimactic. The bulls come through at a slow trot surrounded by steer that keep the pace for them, and runners can easily avoid being gored by simply moving out of the way. I’ve heard it’s more treacherous toward the end as the bulls pick up speed on their way into the arena, where they run around with humans that taunt them. But we didn’t get that far.

We went home for a nice long nap before the bull fight that evening, and came back in time to check out the Ernest Hemingway statue just outside the arena. We made our way in and found our seats in the shady half of the arena. The sunny half is cheaper and much rowdier - pretty much the entire crowd across from us was covered in the telltale sangria purple.

The bull fights started promptly when several matadors accompanied by men on horses stepped into the ring to bow. When the arena was finally cleared the bull came charging out of a tunnel with some kind of tag stuck into it’s back, and we could see shining blood dripping from the spot. About 6 matadors take turns getting the bulls attention and then running behind walls that seem to really confuse the bulls. Eventually two men on blindfolded, armored horses make their way into the arena to distract the bull, and more often than not, the bull would ram the horse while the man stabs the bull with a long spear. Eventually the main matador makes his way out to the center of the arena with two short spears, and as the bull runs for him he quickly stabs it in the back and avoids the horns. He does this maybe 3 more times, until the bull is covered in blood with these spears sticking out of it's back.

Finally the matador faces the bull one on one with the infamous red cape. A good matador is one that doesn’t move his body, only the cape as the bull approaches. He keeps the bull going this way for about 5 minutes before brandishing a sword. The matador prepares for the bull to charge and just as it gets near enough he stabs it right between the shoulder blades. If the matador is a good one, the bull will die quickly, if not, they have to use several swords to finally kill it. The hardest part to watch is when the bull finally collapses to the ground while still fighting to stand. As it lays there another matador approaches it and stabs it several times quickly with a short knife right behind the ears. At the end 4 horsemen come out, attach the bull to a rope, and pull the lifeless body out of the arena.

There were actually 6 bullfights in the 2 hours that we watched, so we saw this process several times. They all went pretty much the same way, but the second matador was slightly gored (or maybe just grazed) on the side of his face, and was so sloppy he had to stab the poor bull 4 times before it finally died.

I respect that this is a tradition that’s been going on for years and years, but I don’t think I’ll ever need to watch it again. It’s hard to see an animal that doesn’t stand a chance slowly die a painful death. Bill and I were also surprised at how irreverant the atmosphere was. We expected the type of bull fights described by Hemingway where people are respectful of the bull and the tradition, and we were instead met by people dumping sangria on one another and impromtu marching bands playing college fight songs. It ended up being a pretty depressing experience, but one I’m glad we had.

Sitting just a few seats away from us were some of the people we met the first night of the festival, so we joined them for another evening that took us back to the first plaza for some fireworks, and onto some bars around the area. We met even more travelers, some that had hiked 500 miles on the St. James trail through Spain, and a few random people that just flew in for the festival. It was a late, fun night, and it made for a tough morning as we moved onto Bordeaux...

San Sebastian

San Sebastian is on the north coast of Spain, pretty close to the French border, so we had a long day of driving before reaching this beautiful little beach town. Little is definitely the right word too, it’s basically one long beach with a few blocks of city behind it.

We stayed at a hotel up a(nother) hill that had a great view of the bay. From there we took a lot of walks down to the beach, pretty much always searching for food. Unfortunately it was pretty rainy everyday that we were there, so we had to find other things to do besides enjoy the beach.

One day we went to the aquarium, which is very cool, though very small. The main attraction is a huge tank with sharks, turtles, stingrays, eels, and various fish that has a walkway through it, so you feel like you're underwater. Besides that, there are about 8 tanks of water for you to look inside with seahorses, jellyfish, and tropical fish. We saw the whole thing in about 15 minutes, so we just hung out in the underwater walkway for a while to get our money’s worth.

Another day we dedicated to doing our laundry, which was way overdue. It took a while, but we kept busy checking out local bars and their versions of tapas, some not so good.

Most of the nights after dinner we found ourselves at an outdoor bar that overlooked the bay and watched the tide come almost all the way up the beach. The view is superb - there are two sort of mountains that form the ends of the “C” that makes the bay, and between them there’s an island thats inaccessible by land. On the mountain to the right there’s a huge statue of Jesus (or so I think, we never made it all the way up there) that’s lit up until late into the night, and on the other two points we could see lighthouses flashing just the slightest bit in our direction every few moments.

Our crowning glory day was the only day that it was really sunny and warm, and it also happened to be the 4th of July. We made our way to the beach with deli stuff to make sandwiches and a little sangria. We spent a few hours just laying in the sun, sometimes diving into the cold Atlantic, but mostly just soaking up the good weather.

All in all, I would say that San Sebastian is a pretty great place to visit for a nice, quiet couple of days. Just make sure to check the weather patterns before you go.

Hola Barcelona!

I speak Spanish pretty fluently (I like to call it restaurant spanish) so on our way to Barcelona I asked Bill if there were any words or phrases he’d like to learn to say in spanish. He thought a minute and then asked how you would say, “Your offer flatters me, but I have a girlfriend.” Funny guy.

We made it to our hotel which was located on a street just off Las Ramblas, right near the marina and close to the center of the city. We were pretty exhausted when we got in, but we didn’t hesitate to get our hands on some sangria and tapas.

The second night we were there we learned that it was the San Juan Festival that same evening. Apparently this holiday is celebrated with lots of fireworks along the beach, so Bill and I decided to take a walk over there. All along the 20 minute walk we saw small explosions and flashes of light right on the street as people lit various fireworks.

When we finally got to the beach it was more insane than we could’ve imagined. There were people all over the beach, with small open areas where people were lighting fireworks. By people I actually mean young children, as there were literally toddlers lighting fireworks and tottering away. We were shocked that we didn’t hear more ambulances or see any limbs shot off. It was quite a sight.

The next day we found our way to La Pedrera, an apartment building created by Gaudi, that basically looks like a crazy jello mold was frozen in time. We were able to take a walk through one of the apartments as it would’ve been furnished in the 20s, then we went through the attic, and onto the roof. The whole building is so innovative and original, I’ll try and get some photos up here soon.

A few days after we arrived we met up with Bill’s cousin Tim, who was in the area for a genius convention or something like that. He was actually at a science conference his boss at Harvard, where he’s earning his PHD, sent him.  The timing worked out great for us to meet up with him.

It was so great to meet up with Tim. Right off the bat we took him down to the beach for his first dip in the Mediterranean. I don’t know if he was more excited by the sight of the beautiful beach or the huge number of boobs that can be seen along the sea coast. Either way, he enjoyed the beach, as did we. It was a quick stop before we took him to what we grew to think of as “our” tapas place for some good food and even better sangria.

That night was the (semi? quarter?) finals of the Euro Cup which saw Spain play some other country that I can’t seem to remember. Obviously it was riveting. It’s actually not so bad watching soccer, I hate watching just about every other sport, but this one is so straight forward - ball into goal. Besides that it lasts 90 minutes, more or less straight through; it’s not like football where the clock stops every 3 or 4 seconds. Also, we were in Spain watching Spain beat those other guys, so there was a lot of adrenaline in the bar we sat at which always makes a game more fun to watch.

The next day we rented bicycles and rode around the city. Our first stop was Sagrada Familia, a cathedral by Gaudi. As you can imagine, Bill and I were all Cathedraled out by this point in our trip, but this one is like nothing else.  Building commenced in the late 19th century, and won’t be done for a LONG time as it is built on donations, which at 8 Euro a person aren’t going to get them anywhere. It’s difficult to describe the cathedral, I'll throw on lots of photos, but what you need to know is that it will eventually be about twice as tall, and it is gorgeous.

After Sagrada Familia we took the bikes to Parque Quell, which is at the top of a very steep hill. I went ahead and stopped when I started seeing white spots and just walked the rest of the way, but Bill and Timmy, both gluttons for punishment, went almost the whole way. This park was also designed by Gaudi, and almost all of it is characterized by mosaics and various tributes to nature, as is so much of his work. If it weren’t for all the annoying tourists taking the same pictures, this park would be all kinds of awesome.

The next day was the day of the Jack Johnson show, which Timmy got us tickets for back in the states. It was at the Olympic Stadium, or so we thought, so a few hours before the show we decided to hoof it over, up another ridiculous hill. We walked for almost an hour before reaching the stadium, which was surprisingly empty. Yes we were an hour or two early, but we thought they should at least have a stage erected by now. A little asking around in broken spanish, and we learned that we were on the wrong side of Barcelona.

We set off down the hill in a different direction toward the subway, and while we were racing we still had time to take in the Olympic Stadium, the Palace (museum maybe? No time for details), and the Magic Fountain. Finally we made it to the subway, and were lucky enough to get on a train with other Jack Johnson fans that we could follow to the concert.

The concert itself was great - it started right on time with Mason Jennings who played solo on an acoustic guitar for about a half hour. After that was G. Love and the Special Sauce who put on a lively, energetic show. Finally Jack Johnson came out and played a nice long set, almost 2 hours by the time he took his final bow. It was so fun seeing one of my favorite artists in a foreign country with Bill and Tim, I’ll definitely remember it as a highlight.

The next day we said goodbye to Tim, but not before we took another trip to the beach. We were lucky enough to get hot weather the whole time we were in Barcelona, so the beach was a great relief. Also a great relief was finding burritos, which I’ve been craving since about a week into our trip.

Anyway, after we walked Tim to the subway we got some food and went back to our room to watch the final game of the Euro Cup - Spain versus Germany. Of course Spain won the whole thing, so we headed out to the streets to see just how mad it got there. Turns out, everyone was pretty excited! People were all over Las Ramblas, yelling and screaming, taking off shirts, dumping stuff on one another, climbing on stores, cars, and streetlights, and generally expressing their happiness of the Spanish victory.

It was pretty cool to be in Spain on such a big night, and it was a perfect end to our visit in Barcelona. The next day we hit the road yet again.