We spent the day walking around the outskirts of Pamplona admiring this ‘green’ city. Pamplona went to a lot of trouble to protect itself from invaders over the centuries, and not only built a fort, but waterways and stone walls erected in a way to slow the invaders down. Today, all these defensive constructions have been filled in or enhanced to create green areas. One of these areas has been set aside as a deer [...]

We are staying in Calle San Nicolas a popular bar street in medieval Pamplona where the bar tops are decorated with a bounty of brightly coloured tapas treats. The street is awash with pink decorations to celebrate the festival of La Calle de Rosa, the pink or rose wines that are famous in this Basque region of Navarra. As I was casually watching the workers tying the pink balloons above bar entrances and twisting pink [...]

Well, I read Hemmingway’s book ‘Fiesta: The Sun also rises’ and it failed to give me an insight into the soul of Pamplona. It talked about his unrequited love, other relationships, and his efforts to get to Pamplona to excite his passion, or ‘aficion‘ as the Spanish call it. The book talked about this ‘aficion‘ as something so powerful that bullfighters’ anxiety and nervousness were not seen as weakness as long as they had ‘aficion’. [...]

A little room with a tiny balcony on a narrow tapas street will be our home for a few days as we live in the large controversial shadow of Ernest Hemingway, the author that made Pamplona famous/infamous. His book, which I will try and buy and read tomorrow was very successful and it has been seen as a very good first novel. I’m not too sure whether I will like the book’s theme but I [...]