July 13
We woke up around 5am to make our train to Pamplona, Spain. The journey was easy enough and we were to the Pamplona train station by 9am! We had to kill an hour at a cafe (playing cards of course) before we could drop our bags at a convenience store/luggage hold.
We took a bus into town and were instantly surrounded by hundreds of people in matching white outfits with red scarves. The San Fermín festival lasts one week and tomorrow is the last day! The bus dropped us next to Jardines de la Taconera and there were many vendors selling red scarves, jewelry, purses, etc. We carefully selected our red festival attire and felt very cool once we were all dressed up.
As we walked closer to the center of Pamplona, we saw a large crowd shuffling into the bull fighting ring without tickets so we joined in and found seats. Turns out, we happened upon the only free event in the ring, a demonstration of matador skills by junior matadors and young bulls. We were grateful to have found the family and kids demonstration because it involved very minimal stabbing of the bulls.
The only bleeding occurred when the bulls would attack the supervising horse/rider who were wearing full padding to protect from injury. The rider would poke the bulls back with a long stick. A flesh wound though.
The highlight of the show was when one of the junior matadors tripped over his capote (colorful cape) and narrowly avoided injury as he fell in front of a charging bull.
We’ve been looking forward to San Fermín for many weeks as it was the first thing we booked for this second half of the summer as just us 4 siblings. Once we knew that we were planning to be in northern Spain around the time of the festival, it was a priority for us to make it happen.
We spent the afternoon walking around Pamplona, listening to the many marching bands perform, watching people celebrate, playing cards, having drinks, and generally soaking up the energy of the festivities. We walked the route for the running of the bulls (the final one takes place tomorrow) to scout out good places to watch Alastair run, and for him to determine where he would start running.
At 4pm, we checked into our AirBnB for the night. We are less than a block from Plaza del Castillo which means that we are right in the middle of the festival! Surprisingly, our room was relatively soundproof. By 5pm, we had taken a bus back towards the train station to collect our bags, and then we transferred them to our room.
After showering, we napped for a few hours. I stayed in to talk to Palmer for a while as my siblings ventured out to find Doner kebabs and ended up walking around town in a neighborhood parade. I found my own kebab and joined them in a square.
We walked a bit out of town to see an 11pm fireworks show at the park. On our walk there, we accidentally joined another parade as they sang along to the marching band. Suddenly, everyone was running to one side of the street and pressing together, then running to the other side. I realized that the lyrics were “a la pared, a la pared, a la pared…” which means “to the wall, to the wall, to the wall…”. It was very entertaining and we were happy to participate.
The fireworks show was impressive and perhaps too loud from where we were sitting. We walked back to the Plaza del Castillo to see the midnight “dance party” but the music wasn’t very interesting to us. Magnolia and Alastair called it a night. Dagny and I went and found a bar full of people around our age. We met a group of Dutch guys and got some advice for our time in Holland later this summer. Asleep by 2am with an early morning tomorrow!
Adelaide
