So, you will surely understand why I didn’t want to go on any big trip during May puente, a 4-day weekend right at the beginning of May. Justin and Christy had just left, I was preparing to leave for GCI a week later, my tutee had final exams coming up, and I just wanted to sleep in. Nevertheless, I had autonomous communities still on my list and Pamplona tempted me into a quick trip.
So, on Wednesday night before May puente I booked a bus ticket for the next afternoon, rearranged my tutoring schedule, and packed up to see Navarra.
One of the best parts of traveling within Spain is the deals that you can get on public transport. With my €30 round-trip bus ticket, I made back the money in the first few hours by reading through my tutee’s course materials and taking notes to review with him in preparation for his final exam. Not too shabby.
When I arrived in Pamplona, I took a walk to the center of the city and read The Wall (a 600+ page book I had been toting around with me for months and was beyond eager to finish) while I waited for the other Fulbrighters to arrive.
Other Fulbrighters? Why yes. Since Semana Santa was so late this year, nobody was too eager to travel again and few had made plans. Everybody called their friends at the last minute and when word got around that Matt and I were thinking of going to Pamplona, I went from taking a solo trip to taking a trip with 5 other people in the span of a few hours.
Once the others arrived, we took advantage of the special that Pamplonan bars have every Thursday night (€2 for a drink and a pintxo). We checked out a number of pintxos bars, a Spanish tradition I had fully enjoyed during my visits to San Sebastián and Bilbao and hadn’t expected to see again in Navarra. We ate until we were too full to continue and headed back to the hostel, where a couple of peregrinos did NOT welcome us with open arms. The group of adults and children were past the honeymoon stage of the camino and despite our attempts to be as quite as possible, they were not too pleased with our entry into the room after 10:00 PM. Having been a peregrino, I understand their desire to get a good night sleep and to have lights out early on, but they hadn’t chosen a peregrino-only hostel and we were in a city where early diners eat at 9:00 PM… so what could they expect?
In the morning they returned us the favor and made plenty of noise packing up their bags and arguing. However, we could afford to suffer a bit more… our big plans for the day consisted of walking around the city and eating. Not exactly a rough life.
The one bummer of the trip is that it was raining, but I can’t really complain about that either since rain is what keeps places so green. And green it was! We walked around the city walls and enjoyed views of grass greener than we would ever see in Madrid.
The city walls
Walking around the city
Later on we checked out the cathedral, where we were all pleasantly surprised by a woman who began singing a capella in the main nave. She was standing right behind me when she started and I thought she was just humming to herself until I heard her belting it out on the other side of the altar. Her voice was beautiful and it brought a much-needed sense of life to the otherwise cold space. It was a good reminder to me of how buildings and other forms of art try to accomplish some sort of beauty worthy of the divine, but always fall short. The beauty of the church is not in the perfection of the architecture or a painting or a hymn, but instead in the human who makes it. My church is not a building, it’s a people and that human voice, though beautiful in tone, was more beautiful to me because it came from a human with a soul and a desire. I remember feeling a bit sad in that moment because I feared others would see it as another level of art that was enhancing the aesthetic experience. And while I consider myself an artist and value aesthetics, I realize that there is so much more to life and beauty than that. My personal relationship with Christ is not shown by the pieces that I’ve danced in churches in Pennsylvania, West Michigan, and Madrid. It is not beautiful because of the songs I sing or the prayers I write. It is beautiful because my heart yearns for the One who made me and God loves me back. I give him my life and he gives me day after day to serve Him and to learn from my mistakes and to make art that demonstrates his grandness, holiness, loveliness.
A grand attempt to capture the essence an unimaginable God
After exploring the cathedral, we wandered around the monastery that was attached.
Iron door
Chimney of the kitchen which had four ovens, one in each corner
The courtyard
Next, we decided to walk the path that bulls run every year during the festival of San Fermín. When we arrived at the beginning, we were surprised to find that the cage for the bulls has a slightly more practical use during the rest of the year…
A parking lot!
We wandered through the city taking the same route as the bulls, once in a while chasing after each other with our fingers pointing off our heads like horns. Then when we arrived to the Plaza de los Toros we decided our accomplishment deserved a reward… lunch.
Crema de espinancas (Spinach cream soup)
Pork with caramelized onions and potatoes
Later in the afternoon we headed over to a museum that reminded me a lot of the Pergamon in Berlin. It had a cool mix of Roman and Arabic art and since there were very few museum-goers that day, the workers were very happy to answer our questions.
My favorite piece… so sweet!
Pavlov’s conditioning of the bell and the dog salivating can easily be transferred to museums and me yawning (No matter how interesting I think the museum is!), so a coffee was in order by the time we left. Luckily, Hemingway recommended us a great place, and as I sat and got re-caffeinated, I recalled passages from The Sun Also Rises that made me happy another American loved Spanish culture as much as I.
One of Hemingway’s favorite spots in Pamplona
To finish off the night, we went to a bar in Pamplona that had gluten-free pintxos (one of the Fulbrighters on the trip has a gluten allergy) and I ordered a pintxo that, though intriguing, is something I never feel the need to repeat. The name torrija de manitos de cerdo should have warned me that I was about to eat fried gelatinous pig feet, but I was so excited to try a savory torrija that I didn’t care. Live and learn.
Torrija de manitos de cerdo... it looks better than it tasted
Our second night sleeping was better than the first and in the morning I went for one last stroll around the city, checking out the artillery section of the city and enjoying a coffee before getting on the bus. Oh, yeah, and I saw someone get hit by a car. Whaaaaaaat?! Right outside our hostel, a car went through a red light and hit the man that was crossing at the same time as I was. Aghast, I stood there in shock until the car passed and I saw the man slowly rise to his feet. The car didn’t stop until almost a block later and the “No pasa nada” attitude he had made me wonder if I should stay as a witness while they called the police. But the locals who were eating their breakfast outside were indignant enough for all of us and the way they were screaming at the man made me think they definitely had it under control… especially since they could handle the situation in their native language.
It was an interesting ending to the trip, but it served as a good reminder that Spanish drivers won't always let pedestrians have the right away. Though they always seem to, the consequences of stepping out in front of one of them could be serious! Just a little public service announcement ;)
Another successful autonomous community checked off the list!
Spain-sick already,
Amber
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