I am probably going to use this word a lot to describe the week in Pamplona, but truthfully I can only think of one word to describe it -- Crazy!!!! On the 4th I travelled down to Shepherd's Bush early in the morning to join up with our tour group and catch the 22 hour coach ride to Pamplona. We were given Fanatics specially designed 'Running with the Bulls' shirts and headed off, with our bus driver Jon Stevens from Noiseworks. After a few introductions and what not, we were at Dover and catching the ferry across to Calais. A couple [View Full Entry]

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JULY 6th PAMPLONA LA FIESTA I arrived in Pamplona on the evening of the sixth, having spent that entire day traveling from Santiago de Compostela -- far in Spain's northeast. The train along the final stretch, from Vitoria to Pamplona, was already filled with only party-goers -- most my age -- already decked out in the all-white garb with red scarf traditional to the Fiesta de San Fermin. Everyone was already drinking, passing around big plastic bottles of red wine mixed with coke (Kalimocho, the regional students' drink of choice) and sharing chunks of fresh baguette. Som [View Full Entry]

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Imagine that there existed two swords weighing in at around 500kgs each. Imagine that 6 sets of these swords happened to run at approximately 40km/h and were attached to the front of particularly angry animals. Imagine who would be stupid enough to voluntarily run in front of these beasts? These were the exact thoughts running through my head as the crowd started to get pushed BACK towards the start by the Spanish police. I turned to the Spanish guy next to me who was ever most inclined to deliver me bad news. "How many times have you run?" "This is my [View Full Entry]

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'Enceirno' is what the Spanish call the Festival de San Fernim. It is a festival to celebrate Saint Fermin that uses what all spanish festivals use to celebrate a saints day. Bullfights; of course. But this city sought to it long ago that they would always be different by letting the bulls run through the streets to the bull ring on their own. Then it so happened that young men, in attempts to prove their bravery, would run out in front of the giant beasts. That city, of course, is Pamplona; and Enceirno, as the Spanish call it, is better known [View Full Entry]

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As the title suggests the main reason for this blog is to tell you about Pamplona and the running of the bulls but I'll start where our Spanish experience begun and that is in San Sebastian. San Sebastian Baz and I had 4 days in San Sebestian and the main thing on our agenda for those 4 days was relaxing at the beach and rewinding after our hectic France tour. Unfortunately Baz felt a little under the weahter for most of those days so we spent a lot of the time near our hostel. We did manage to check out the [View Full Entry]

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hola from the san fermin festival in pamplona, spain! first of all, i need to let anyone reading this that my cell phone and 110 euros was stolen from me our first night here so i have no way of calling or texting anybody...bummer...also, i want to apologize for not getting more pics up and don´t know exactly when the other two posts actually went up on this site...it´s tuesday afternoon here at 1.30pm and i´m typing on an spanish keyboard and the characters are almost the same but the special characters all over the place so i´m just typing without [View Full Entry]

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I´m still in San Sebastian, but here are some pics from Pamplona and the Running of the Bulls to whet your appetite. It was absolutely mad! [View Full Entry]

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Since there are some of you out there who should not be reading this entry, I´m going to rate this entry RB (that is: Restricted due to Bullish content). What this rating means is that anyone under the age of, say, 15, those who do not wish to see photos of the running of the bulls, and all mothers are strictly prohibited from viewing this entry and the photos contained herein. On a more serious note, I have posted pictures of the running of the bulls and a couple from the bull fight that we went to in Pamplona. If you [View Full Entry]

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We managed to take a day trip down to Pamplona during the running of the Bulls.We intentionally got there later, to avoid the crowds, but at 11am in the morning there were still a lot of people wandering the streets, and a lot of people crashed out under any shade they could get. This place is extremely hot! Everywhere we went there was a sea of people dressed in white and red, Greg and I really stood out like tourist today! [View Full Entry]

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There’s no good reason to have Run with the Bulls other than it seemed like a good idea at the time. Hemmingway must have seen something genius and manly about the festival of San Fermin and wasn’t old Ernest considered a Man among Men? Either way, it really wasn’t as scary as the Blooper reel you’ve seen on TV would indicate. Can you die while running with the Bulls? Yes. Can you get gored by an angry Bull and become paralyzed? Yes (and in fact someone did a few days prior to my run). But then again there’s an element of [View Full Entry]

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