Pamplona and San Sebastián

So I left Salamanca for Pamplona at 2:45 on Friday. We had an hour and a half layover in a city called Vitoria. The travel agency that we booked our bus tickets at only printed one page for all of us (10 people total in my group, but 98% of my program went to Pamplona and San Sebastián this weekend), so a girl named Elise was in charge of the tickets. There was a bunch of buses leaving for Pamplona at this bus station, as well as a crazy amount of people, so Kelly M. and I became separated from the group. They all got on a bus and then that bus filled and started to pull away with Kelly and I outside, ticketless. We had a minor panic attack and banged on the doors of the bus and another girl from the group (Megan) ran to the front of the bus to explain the problem to the driver. He was really mean and wasn´t going to open the doors to help us out, but then he had to go talk to someone outside of the bus, so he had to open up the doors. Megan shoved the tickets in our hands and we ran to another bus and got on.

Arriving in Pamplona was like arriving in a sea of red and white. Everyone was in all white with red scarves and other red accessories. It was pretty much crazy. I was originally wearing black capris, but I bought some white pants there for only 8 euros, and they were really comfy. It was a really good choice because it got kind of cold throughout the night. We didn´t have a hostel or anything, so we had to stay awake all night, which wasn´t hard because the streets were filled with people all night. There were fireworks about an hour after we got there. We found this really cool and huge rope structure, originally intended for children of course, but as I love all play structures, I played on it for a while with some friends. It was really awesome. We explored the city a bit and then at 4:30, we got these spots on a street that overlooks the encierro (the running of the bulls). We staked out the spot by having a few people there at all times. We had to keep walking around in order to stay warm. I would like to mention the state of the people at this celebration of San Fermín - incredibly drunk. Also, the streets strongly smelled of urine, as they were filled with it, but it was still a fun experience. Our spot to watch the bulls was right above where they pray to San Fermín for protection during the race, which is right by the start of the race. At 7:30 or so they put the decorations and the saint in a window thing in the wall of the street of the encierro and 10 minutes or so they crazy amount of people in the street did their prayer, and 8:00 the bulls were let loose. They run super fast and there were so many people in the streets. I took some really good pictures and got a video of the prayer and the bulls running. After that, I went down and walked the encierro and then explored some more of the city. At 2:00, our bus left for San Sebastián.

San Sebastián is beautiful. It is a city in the Basque Country, which is in the North of Spain and it is right by the ocean. We were really tired (as we didn´t sleep all night), so we went to the beach (super beautiful) and relaxed. Then we took a short nap at the hostel and then the Kellys, Lauren T. and I went out for tapas. We hit up three tapas bars, and at the second bar I had one of the best totilla patatas ever. Later we walked around and had delicious gelato (I had caramel and coconut) and then went to bed (we were so tired).

The next day all of my friends were bums and just wanted to go the the beach again, so we went. I found some time to go check out a church alone and then met them for lunch at the really cute, delicious, and cheap restaurant that was right on the water. Then we had to run and catch our bus back to Salamanca at 3:45.