À Pampelune! (Pamplona!)

Isn't the French name for Pamplona so fun to say? "Pam-ploon!" Anyways, we arrived in Pamplona in mid-afternoon, and got extremely confused looking for our hotel (a recurring theme on this trip). But fortunately, it was sunny and beautiful out, and Pamplona is really pretty! The buildings were all old and Spanish-y looking, and there was a really nice open square near our hotel, and above a parking garage where we weren't supposed to park but did anyways.

After checking in, we of course walked the route of the famous Running of the Bulls. The start is a not-so-glamorous parking lot behind this old stone building (see photo on the left), but there was a sign telling us a little bit about the history of the run. We followed the red signs to make our way down the half-mile route, ending at the bull fighting stadium. We went inside, but we couldn't actually see that much  because there was a building set up in the ring with a market going on inside. Surprisingly, we did not see a single bull figurine there!

The stadium at the end -  we made it!

Then we walked around the old town area for a while, which has a lot of really pretty buildings, and we saw the Cathedral of Pamplona. Unfortunately, most stuff was closed here too because of Dia de los Reyes. But it was still nice to just walk around, plus all the Christmas lights were still up, and let me tell you, Europe knows how to do municipal Christmas decorations!

Cathedral of Pamplona

Pamplona town hall

We also found this crazy Running of the Bulls statue. It was a little startling because the bulls are very clearly winning here. There's at least three people on the ground, and one is literally being leapt over by a bull in mid-air. I guess it's a cautionary statement?

This guy is in trouble.

For dinner, we had sandwiches again, then these really delicious churros from a Christmas market that was going on in that same square near our hotel. They were so good! Plus it was really cold and the churros were warm and covered in an extremely generous amount of sugar. I was surprised to see churros in Spain because I always assumed churros were Mexican food; I guess because in California, one assumes that all food with a Spanish name is Mexican. However, Wikipedia has informed me that churros actually are Spanish!

The next day, we went to the Church of San Cernín before hitting the road again. It was really interesting to see because not only was it an awesome Spanish Gothic-style church, but there were bulls incorporated into the altars:

The pedestal the angel is on has bull horns!

If you look closely, you'll see there's a picture of a bull in the center.

Then we were off on quite the day of driving to get to Nantes, France! On a side note, it was weird crossing the France-Spain border because there are no customs since they're both in the Schengen Zone. Driving to Bilbao, we were expecting a big Bienvenidos! sign, but it was more like, "Wait, all the signs are in Spanish now? Did we cross the border? What? When?"

À bientôt!

P.S. Check out the crazy animated crosswalk signals they have in Spain: