Viva San Fermin!

Wow! That´s all I can say! look at all the people!!! and that cloud in the distance? Champagne!

Here we are in our traditional garb. Above is what we saw when we arrived in the old city...this was about 11:15am and at this point I think we had just located our first drink. Pretty sure the rest of these peeps were drinking all night. You get there and everyone is shaking up champagne and throwing it in the air or have water guns filled with wine... the first 3 guys to look at me said ¨very nice!¨and promptly poured champagne\wine\you name it all over my head and my shirt. Then I just laughed at them b\c I had been forewarned and therefore wore a non-see-through-when-wet top underneath my whites. smart hilary!

We worked our way into the crowds to try to catch the beginning of the parade, and actually ended up right in the middle of the CRAZY town square. I mean, you can hardly breath there are so many people. I don´t have pics of that now b/c I took them on my one-use camera to avoid ruining my real camera. Anyway, more people than you can possibly imagine. The crowd starts singing and jumping and you have to do it too b/c they are lifting you with them it´s so crowded! We saw the rockets go off which signify the start of San Fermin, and then everyone started chanting stuff. Apparantly a fight broke out behind us, so Joe shoved LBB and I to the side and we worked our way out of the craziness and to the side streets, where everyone moves along chanting something, and they crouch down like a bull and sing quiet, then they jump up and down a bunch. Then they scream for Agua to the people on the balconies and suddenly buckets of water are coming down from the sky. Nice b/c it washes off all the wine, champagne, beer, mustard and ketchup that has been thrown at you over the past hour, but kinda cold and surprising. to the left is a pic of the alley we went through. YOu can see the balconies above!

After the craziness we wandered around a bit and drank some wine and coke. Yes, wine and coke. It´s the local drink. We put it in pouches b-c otherwise you risk getting bottles broken all over. Check it out -->

Overall it was a really fun day. I´m exhausted but now it´s time for a nap before we get up around 10pm to go in, eat dinner, and party til the bulls run at 8am! It´s crazy! Fortunately, our sweet housemom, which I´ve decided to call her, has her place about a 15 minute walk from where it all happens, so if we get too tired we can come home and take a little nap. Tomorrow morning we have a balcony to watch the bull run! Should be awesome!! Here we are practicing getting out of the way...

So that´s the update! Having a blast and ready for a nap! Hugs to all!!!