Saturday, February 23, 2008

Pamplona, Navarra

Wow! I forgot to bring my camera to Pamplona! Abby took pictures though... I will have to see if I can borrow some for my blog. She will put pictures up on her blog too.

Pamplona is famous for its 'Running of the Bulls'... el encierro. The Running of the Bulls takes place every morning during the Fiesta de San Fermin... the biggest festival of the year in Pamplona. The festival takes place every year during the first week of July. The bulls run several kilometers through the center of town and end their run in the Bullfighting Ring where, later in the day, there will be Bullfights... corridas. Only the biggest bulls from Spain are used during San Fermin, and the Running of the Bulls through the streets is actually illegal in everywhere in Spain besides Pamplona. There are mini-Bullruns other places... but they are with smaller bulls with sheered horns. The bulls that run in Pamplona are bigger and have their sharp horns intact, making them ultra dangerous.

The Fiesta of San Fermin was a local festival until Ernest Hemingway discovered it and wrote several important and famous novels about it, thus telling the world about little Pamplona and it's spectacular party. Today, because of the influence of Hemingway and his stories, the Fiesta de San Fermin is famous worldwide, and there are literally seas of people who go to the week long festival. In order to reserve a room in Pamplona during the festival, you'd probably have to book a place a year or more in advance.

Pamplona is a small city (about 200,000). It is the capital of the autonomous community of Navarra (northeast of Logrono and La Rioja). We took a bus to Pamplona for a day, and it only took a little over one hour to get there. It's a region known for its geography (the rivers, the sea in the north, the valleys, and the foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains) and also for its history as an ancient kingdom of Spain (the Kingdom of Navarra).



Abby and I walked along the path that the bulls and the crazy people take when they run through the city. We saw the beautiful, giant, old bullfighting ring (Plaza de Torros), which has also been restored. We visited several of the fine parks in the city, and also an ancient area of castle walls known as the ciudadela, which is Spanish for citadel.

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