Churches and churches
And fountains and citadels
An old town brimming.
Pamplona is lovely. We spent the day basically wandering around the streets with nothing particular in mind to do. We caught up on our internet things (well, some of them... oopsie) and checked out the route for the Encierro that's coming up during the Festival San Fermín (it's scary to think of running that ahead of bulls... but we also looked up a video on YouTube which revealed that no one actually runs in front of the bulls that far; they basically run a little, get the hell out of the bulls' way, and then follow them much later to the bullring). We cooked dinner in a park (delicious albondigas--Spanish meatballs--and vegetables).
The old town is packed with... well, old buildings. It's also got a lot of parks. Within Pamplona proper there are apparently 11km² of parks, which is shared between the just 200,000 inhabitants. And the tourists share it, I guess. Many of the parks even offer free wireless, which is a godsend for travellers with no 3G card. You can tell that the whole city is getting ready for San Fermín: shop stalls are going up in the bosquecillo park, bakery owners are pushing pañuelicos (red bandana-shaped cookies), and the air is generally one of excitement. I'm pretty anxious to see what this thing is about!
Oh, and fútbol.
The Spanish World Cup team is doing stellarly this year. They played in the quarter finals tonight, and all of Pamplona wanted to see. So the city put up a giant television screen in the Plaza del Castillo (one of the main squares in town) and showed it. To thousands of people. For free! Evan and I sat in a café for a little while during the first half to try out the local sangría, then found ourselves a spot among the young people jostling each other at the front. We were between some guys with painted faces and a guy with a Spanish flag draped around his shoulders. It was gonna be good when Portugal got reamed.
And get reamed they did. The entire square jumped up at each attempt of Portugal's to score a goal, and everyone cheered and danced at Spain's score. There was angry shouting when people felt that a yellow card or penalty kick should have been awarded. It was suuuuuuuperrrrrrrrrrr to be there. :D