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Published: July 16th 2008
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Pamplona
Running with the bulls We survived the bull run! It was a fantastic, tiring couple of days but completly worth it! I´ll mention what we got up to in Madrid first, not much at all really! Coming from Scotland where it had been raining and windy the whole time and hitting 38 Deg it was just exhusting for us two! The first day there we were buggered from the travels getting to Spain so we just foud a park and had a siesta for a few hours to get out of the midday heat. Still we had plenty of time to have a look around the city that afternoon and the next day and on the whole there wasn´t to much to see in the city. I have heard that it can be quite boring on the eye but the night life is something different! Two good things about Spain is the afternoon siesta which everyone does and the whole place seems to shut down and the other is the tapas. This is the food they give you when you order a beer! It was great, just the same as Italy so get a meal with every drink! The heat is good but to much
Pamplona
Running with the bulls for us at the moment so getting used to it now..
Now to Pamplona.. It is hard to explain the scale of the party that goes on here every single night for two weeks.. It is going 24 hours and one big party rolled into one.. We turned up with really know idea what to do so first was to dunp our bags and then head to a pub of course which was easy enough. Got our running gear organised for the next day and that was it. We had know idea where we were going to sleep and everything was full so thought a park bench would be fine a little latter for a few hours.. Well it was raining of course so that was out the window so just went to the bars around the place. The few hours sleep that we had planned never quite happened so from the pub it was a small walk to the run and waiting for the bulls to come out. Dont worry we were not drunk by this stage because standing upright for a 1 1/2 hours waiting until 8am will soon sober anyone up! It was a crazy night still,
Pamplona
Watching the run the next day every pub was packed and there is also stages placed arond the city and we happened to stumble across one at about 1am and was there until 6am with the bands still going.. Spanish really know how to party!! I learnt how to dance salsa (well i think it was) thanks to Lisa and a lot of help from the old Spanish locals who loved trying to teach us how to do it.
Now the run, just went so quick (3 minutes) and the adrenalin really was pumping before and after. The waiting for the bulls to appear is the worst part and when you do you just run even though it doesn´t really help since they pass you anyway. The biggest danger is falling over other ppl whilst trying to get into the ring because when the bulls are in they close the gate and in the ring is where the real fun happens. They let out 5 smaller but angry bulls who go charging around trying to hit as many people as possible and they do clean some up real bad. That is the most fun in there by far and the crowd in the stadium was packed
to the rafters hoping people would get hurt and would cheer when they get hit. Some close calls but nothing to bad and the actual run onlt a few people hurt pretty bad so a good day had by all. Great fun it is!
Well that is about it for the run, we were in desperate need of some sleep (see photos for what we come up with) then another late night was on the cards of course, had to celebrate surviving the run 😊
With our livers in disarray we headed back to Madrid for a night and then onto Portugal where we are now (Porto) and it is even hotter than Madrid!
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Chris and Nikki
Chris
Great pictures & I loved reading the blog. I went last year so it bought back some memories! :-)