Running of the Bulls

Arriving to Pamplona was exciting; after the bus had gotten past a certain point you only saw people in white and red. I spent the first couple hours walking around and trying to reconnect with the MIT group that I had met up with in Barcelona. I played this game where I hopped around on payphones since my prepaid cell didn't work in Spain. It eventually worked out.

I came ready with my costume, though the only pants I could find were off-white.We spent most of teh day lounging around. We didn't catch the opening ceremony, which happened at noon. Though we didn't have to deal with getting drenched in the Sangria that everyone throws around during that part of the ceremony. There were people walking around drenched in it.

Here are the MIT students sitting in the park towards the end of the day

As you can see, there were a lot of people around doing the same thing.

The park was a good place to see the fireworks after nightfall. They were pretty impressive, almost up there with Boston's Fourth of July. 

After then, we went around the city for the entire night. The shutter speed on my point-and-shoot camera wasn't fast enough to get a steady picture in more of the night shots. We hung out in a plazza for awhile and at one point were in a cafe/restaurant that turned into a club at night during the festival.

At one point during the night, we ran across this sketchy stand selling hamburgers for 5 euro. It was literally a burner under a sheet of metal. A couple people from our group got one, but I wasn't about to chance it and bought a kabab somewhere later.

The original plan was the sleep in the park, but we ended up powering through and walking around all night which was probably a better choice. It was a little chilly and the people we saw trying to camp in the park didn't look to comfortable.

At 5am we started to stake out a spot to see the actual running, which happens everyday at 8am during the festival. I believe it was originally used to transport the bulls from where they were kept to the stadium where the bullfighting would take place in the evening. We found a good place where you could see down a long stretch of the route. This first picture shows where the people were lining up, and you can see some bulls in the second one down the street running away from my camera.

Overall, I probably wouldn't line up for it again, since the whole thing was about 15 or 30 seconds of action combined (they let out multiple rounds of bulls). But I couldn't leave without trying to see it. 

We walked down to the stadium afterwards, though we didn't stay in the town long enough to see the matadors fight the bulls.

Here is the same square at 9am in the morning. Not many people chose to wake up early.

On our way to our next destination we ran into a spontaneous crowd having a party on the street. It was two saxophone players and a man with a drum playing songs that everyone seemed to know while the crowd danced around together. At one point we all crouched down low then brought it back up with the music. 

The last thing we were able to catch was a parade. I didn't know who was waving from the balcony but I assumed it was royalty or officials or something. The big costumes were followed by a marching band as they processed.

Originally I thought that the Running of the Bulls would be like a city carnival, but it actually ended up being closer to St. Patrick's day in Boston where the main event is everyone dressing up in the same color and drinking a lot. I thought it would be more cultural but it ended up being a lot of cheap sangria and trash on the floor. It was a sight to see but I was glad we only stayed for a day by the time we left to San Sebastian. It may have been different if we had a place to stay.