Saturday 5/25/19 – Well I did my “follow the sun” routine again today (seems like there’s a rain system hanging along the coast). I took a bus southeast towards Barcelona to Pamplona (also called Iruna in Basque). I’m sure you all know it as the famous city with the running of the bulls. Ernest Hemingway really liked it here and wrote his famous book, “The Sun Also Rises” about the running of the bulls which is part of the San Fermín Festival.
The San Fermín Festival starts on July 6th and lasts for a week. During this time the city is flooded with more than a million visitors and turns into one of the world’s largest fiestas. There is of course, the daily “Running of the Bulls” where hundreds of people run in front of the bulls down a narrow stretch of the old town. The bulls run lasts for just a few minutes before ending in the bullring.
As you can see by the first two pics, I visited the famous bull ring and had both my muleta (the red cloth) and my capote de brega (my cape). You should have seen how scared that bull was! Lol.
Although I wasn’t here at the time to see the running of the bulls, it did feel like it was the running of the humans! There were people packed in the streets due to today being the “Old Town Pamplona Festival”, which was a great thing. There were bands playing everywhere, people marching thru the streets, and lots of people dancing on the various town squares. It was so fun and I just got lucky that it happened to be on the day I chose to come here. It’s those unexpected moments where you just happen upon stuff that makes travel so interesting.
They were giving out tons of free wine and these pink straw hat type “sombreros” that you see in several of the pictures.
You know how I love all the old European churches so I included several of those with the biggest being the Santa Maria Le Real Cathedral which was built during the 14th and 15th centuries.
The last pic is a fun snack they had at various places of a cone full of bite sized either salami, cheese or ham (jambon). Tasty!!
Well that’s all for now. I’m a little sad since this is really my last big travel day of the trip. Tomorrow I take a bus to the Madrid airport and am staying at a hotel near there to make it easier to fly home on Monday. I’ve been to Madrid three times (OK, sorry, that sounded a little travel snobbish! Lol) and while I love it, I decided to just use it as a gateway back to the good old USA.
I’ll post one final blog update tomorrow. Hope everyone is having a happy Saturday! Enjoy!
Jeff
PS: Just realized while trying to post all my pics that I ran out of space in my blog! Lol. Oh well, sorry you couldn’t see all my pics and I’ll try to get it fixed before the next trip!
The Wandering Italian 