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Madrid – Pamplona – Day 36-39

So we had a whirl-wind adventure these past four days, travelling from Madrid, to Pamplona and back to Madrid and now we are back to “reality” in Copenhagen. All in all we used 4 different forms of transportation and took 4 flights, 4 inter-city bus trips, 4 metro trips and one shuttle.

We arrived in Madrid Wednesday afternoon and met up with Charles at the Way Hostel. The staff was very nice and the rooms were decent. We walked around the area where our Hostel was and then had Sangrias and Tapas at an outdoor patio called La Taperia. We decided to embark on a pub crawl that evening which included lots of dancing, sangria and tequila shots but had to call it an early night to prepare for the epic travelling on Friday.

After five hours bus ride (with a stop in Soria) we arrived in Pamplona. It was 31 C (soo hot!) and our hostel room was fantastic. It was actually more like a hotel room. We then met Peter Griffin (Pete), not the family guy (I know, I should be used to lame name jokes) who joined us for most of the rest of our time in Pamplona. From the hostel we took the bus to the downtown area of Pamplona to check out the route of the running of the bulls and to try and catch the bullfight show.

So, I had no idea the bullfight was not really much of a fight, but more like
matadors teasing the bull and slowly killing it before giving it one final blow
while the crowd cheered on. Needless to say, we only watch one bull (even then I stopped watching when they actually killed the bull, it was pretty intense and ya I’m lame and got upset) but to focus on the good parts, the Sangrias were like 1 litre cups, the madators are quite impressive in their skills and the “top matador” looked like he was actually dancing with the bull.

After that we toured the streets of Pamplona, and holy crap do they know how to party there! There were bands playing in the street, hundreds of people crammed in and out of bars and Sangrias that were 1.5 Litres! I really liked that it was a family affair, there were lots of old people and young people and even little kids out until midnight! We called it an early night because the boys were going to run in the morning and didn’t want to feel like crap, but if we wanted to we could have stayed up and drank/partied for 24 hours.

We got up around 5:30 am and headed down to the ‘track’. We scoped out a spot that was close to the entrance of the bullring. I attempted to get on the fence for a good clear view, but some jackass guy literally tried yanking my arm off! Luckily I’m a tough cookie but would have sucked if I fell, lame injury from not even running!

So before it starts they push everyone in the track back to the start, and
they sing a prayer to San Fermin. Then the boys moved up to their ‘starting’ point.they said that when the first rocket went off, everyone was tense and it was like “Shit just got real”. They started to jog for a bit when others did and were trying to see where the bulls were, when at one point people just start pushing and you have no choice but to run for your life! They made it successfully into the bullring and over the fence and no one was injured (except Chirag’s tiny boo-boo on his elbow). During the run they were around 5 seconds ahead of the bulls which is freakin close! Even as a bystander you could feel the adrelinane rush of everyone. It was quite amazing.

So we were supposed to stick around Pamplona to catch a bus at 1 am (note, this was 8:15 am in the morning…) but managed to switch to a 4:15 pm bus. Charles headed of to San Sebastian for some more surfing and we travelled back to Madrid. Luckily we were able to get a room for ourselves back at the Way Hostel and we found a really yummy place to eat on Calle De Atocha at Plaza de Jacinto.

The next morning I got up early and decided to walk around a bit of Madrid before we had to head to the airport. I really loved the architecture there and I wish I could have seen a bit more of the city. I walked to Plaza de Mayor, then along Calle Mayor through Sol and to Plaza de Cibeles. Accidently I walked onto a movie set and got yelled at by a woman in Spanish before another woman said “No Espanol”.. and then explained that they were shooting.

Three top things I liked about Spain: