We woke at the crack of dawn, it was the morning of the bull run. Soon we would be being chased by a dozen 100 stone, 35mph horned beasts.. We dressed in the traditional outfits and waited at the town hall with the other two thousand runners. After an hour a firework went off signifying that the bulls were out and swarms of people started to run in panic. We knew to stay still, to wait until they were close which didn't take long. In seconds they were here people around pushing and shoving, it was chaos. Most of the bulls flew past before you knew it but you had to keep running, there could be more. One came alongside and fell, a dangerous situation as they can get disorientated, luckily this one picked itself up and carried on. A few seconds later and the sprint had slowed but a glance over the shoulder showed another bull behind. Once it was passed we ran the rest of the course and into the bull ring, by this time they were in pens and people celebrated in the middle.
That wasn't it though, after a few minutes the entrance was closed and many of the runners had gone over the safety wall to safety. Tim and Mark however stayed for the next event. They would now let several baby bulls into the arena one at a time with rubber ends on the horns. These would then charge around trying to throw people up in the air whilst we had to see how close we could get. Mark got within about 2 foot but luckily had his running shoes on. Tim mainly pushed other people on the floor. One guy jumped onto the head of the bull, something very frowned upon. The crowd jeered like in a scene from gladiator and when he fell off he was kicked and punched by those around him for about a minute before being dragged off by the guards. Only in Spain is this legal!
Once that was over we needed breakfast so found somewhere quickly before they all filled up. We ordered some ham thing with bread which we found out came with a free bottle of wine. So at 8:50 that pretty much set up the rest of the day.
We roamed around the city for most of the day and stopped at midday to watch the drunks in the park. One was trying to play his guitar that didn't have any strings while another took about 10 minutes to stand up only to face plant the floor immediately after all without spilling a drop.
Wherever you go in Pamplona there are lookee lookee men trying to sell you hats, watches or sunglasses. Literally every 2mins one comes over. Mark got annoyed and told him that he was the 80th one and to go away, which prompted the lookee lookee man to call him a racist.
We met a few others had a some beers, Kieron thinks he is Ewan McGregor but is actually more like the guy from Police Academy who shouts everything.
Later while sat on some grass having a beer some old girls wanted their photos with us, we realised then that they thought we were the local drunks :)
In the evening we went to King Kebab to see if it was as good as back home, to be fair, it wasn't bad, but the true test would be how much toilet time it would produce.
We watched the fireworks again, this time we sat in the middle of a dual carriageway. We had a great view and the display was better, but we missed the sound from last night's courtyard. Towards the end I think Tim took control of them as they appeared to just get bored and let them all off at the same time.
On the way back to the apartment, Tim let off some fire crackers and smoke bombs that he'd brought without anyone knowing and got a few cheers from the locals.
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