Hotel Husa Noain Pamplona

... by our tour guide Calvin. The temperature was warm..Biarritz was 23 degrees, Pamplona was 37 on our tour! So after bullfighting things we then walked to the main square down the main street of the Bull run, with suitable merchandising shops. The main square is lovely and the historical significance of the Bull run is interesting. After this we all headed to the oldest bar in Pamplona for Tapas and Sangria. The Sangria was THE BEST I'd ever had.. so nice. The ...

... typical 10 pm curfew), and I struggled with feeling jealous and disappointed, and wondering what this meant... should i have tried harder to stay with the group? was this just pure luck? Regardless, i hope to run into some town festivals along the way at some point, as they seem amazing.

Met a boy from south korea who told me he recognized what ¨Penn¨ was from the tshirt i sleep in!! He said he was impressed I went to such a great school, and i hate that I loved to hear that.

... Thus, strangers seem to almost immediately jump into asking each other questions that to an outsider would seem intrusive. It is sometimes hard with the language differences, as i feel unable to fully express myself to someone who is not fluent in English. For the other person, it is undoubtably worse, as speaking in a foreign language is exhausting and it is likewise frustrating attempting to express yourself. Despite this, I felt my conversation ...

... exactly that is. He has an adorable little son (i gather from a picture) and, like many of the people on the camino, has relatively recently separated from his partner (in this case the mother of his son).

Eventually we came to a town that we ended up lounging aorund in for quite a few hours. We waited for Jorge and many of the other (mostly french) to catch up and ate. Two french women in their late 30s were there, on of which now lives in Hawaii, so i was actually able to ...

Pamplona and San Fermin-
We woke up super early to get our day pack together, checked out of the hostel, left our back packs in the luggage room and headed out for the train station. The train left for Pamplona at 7:30 am and we were off. We really didn’t know what to expect from the city, what the people would be like and weather we would return victorious or potentially injured. The train was full of Australian and American tourists, a thyme which we would see later ...

... have a rolled up newspaper to smack the bulls in case something happens. And you could see all these arms touching or smacking the bulls. And a few idiots almost got trampled by the pack.



Bottom Line:

Ease for Americans: Easy. My 2 years of Spanish 10 years ago finally payed off. I think I learned more Spanish in 10 or however many days I´ve been here for. The Spanish love to fiesta! My original plan was to do Spain and ...

... So I walk through forests, pass meadows and eat blackberries all the time. The forest is fascinating, with all those noises, the misty path and almost no people. Almost - I encounter two fellow pilgrims who I remember from yesterday's dinner. It's Sandor and Neia, the artist couple from Finland. They seem to be as intrigued by the forest as I am, for they stop every ten meters or so to take pictures. In the next village, there's a ...

... m sure. I certainly saw him take a few people down, break some bones, buck someone over the fence within 15 feet of me (that was rough!!!). I wish I had more spunk at the time to try to take him on but I did manage to smack him a few times..and was terrified of him turning around on my each of the times. While in the middle of the ring I physically ran into my friend Josh, the one I had originally started traveling with...again, small world. Fantastic experience which I hope to live again.

11:00pm; Tomorrow is the big day, I need to be fresh, stretched and more importantly as sober as possible. If I go to bed now I'm guaranteed five hours of good sleep right? Well that was a total pipe dream. Between my cheering neighbors and the anti-aerial explosions they call fireworks, bits of sleep were few and far between. Times flies when your dreams involve being gored by a 2 tonne steak with horns. This is like the buffet nightmare where the main course actually comes ...

... to Pamps. Once in the flat, we set about a couple of hard days of drinking sangria, calimotxo (a local Spanish drink which is a mixture of red wine and coke) and beers. 2 days is a long time, whilst waiting for San Fermin to start on the 6th. On the 6th, everyone piles into the town square as I had previously explained in 98. Nothing had changed. Once we got into the square, Anal was pick pocketed and he lost his phone. He consoled himself by drinking ...