Day 5: Pamplona Kick Off Party

We plan to wake up early the next day so we can see Barcelona's old town. As usual, our plans failed. We left the hotel with 1.5 hours left to sight see. We made full use of the 1.5 hours and was able to see most of the old town. I also saw Zara everywhere. :P

This arch reminds me of Oxford Arch only this one is more detailed. No offense to Oxfordshire residents.

At the Pamplona Kick Off Party. As a tradition, attendees are supposed to wear white with red scarf and belt. We bought the belt after this photo was taken and the jacket after an hour. It was 17 degrees cold in Pamplona. I thought it was warm all over Spain but I was wrong! :P We ate a 5 Euro baguette for dinner. It was labelled bad baguette the next day. We tried all sorts of drinks that night, Kalimotx which is a combination of wine and coke.

This photo was taken before the fireworks display. During the display, everyone was seated and were sitting silently. One couple was standing, taking videos and was crucified by the crowd. They didn't care though. At the end, rubbish was thrown at them. It was harsh. I had fun watching the fireworks. I've always loved fireworks display. I was clapping and ooohhh-ing while watching the display. :) I tried standing to take photos but boo-ed by the crowd. Hahaha!

I love Jesus of Pamplona. Can you spot him? This guy kept us entertained before the bull run started. He was happy eating his Doritos. Actually, our boys joined the bull run. We were strategically positioned in the middle of the race but was shoved by the police as we were standing on the reserved section. The funny thing is, I had two fights to secure that spot.

Fight One: With a drunk Mexican guy. Mind you, everyone is sleep deprived, tired and drunk. We were standing in our chosen spot when the guy sat in our section. I said, excuse me, this is our spot. He just looked at us. I was pissed cause he wasn't listening so I repeated myself. He said fuck off so I said fuck off back. His friend asked him to move and was very apologetic. The guy didn't stop and spoke in Spanish. He asked where I was from but I didn't answer him. He ask, are you Canadian or American? Too bad I can speak 5 languages he said, you can only speak English so I spoke in Tagalog with Melay. He said, poor language. He obviously haven't heard of tagalog. More abuse followed so I move to a spot nearby and he said, I won. What an asshole!

Fight Two: With a drunk spaced out guy. This is a brief encounter actually. We were standing on our new spot when he positioned himself to where we are. (we were behind the fence btw) He blocked Melay's spot and no matter how we spoke with him, we only get spaced out response. It was hard so we both move, again.

This is the bull run crowd. After we were shoved off by the police, we found a spot at the end of the bull run. We didn't see much. We didn't even see the bulls. All we can see were people running and heard 2 gun shots. The boys finished the race safely and one Spanish guy was gored by the bull the next day. He later died. We took the train to Madrid the same day.