Pamplona, Zaragova, Barcelona

We had a long drive yesterday, stopping in Pamplona and Zaragova along the way to Barcelona. The short stop in Pamplona was to see the streets where the running of the bulls will occur later in July. Our crazy tour manager made horns with her fingers and ran around the plaza, running into people in the group. She´s nuts, but in a good way. Apparently many of the fatalities during the running of the bulls have nothing to do with the bulls. There´s a particular pub with a rooftop several stories up along the route. People get very drunk, go up to the top, and deliberately jump off, hoping others will catch them. Sometimes they just go splat. Darwin would smile.

Zaragova was an absolutely beautiful city, or at least the main plaza we saw was. Unfortunately we didn´t have time for anything else. The plaza is a huge stone laid open area at least the size of a couple of football fields with some statues and fountains, but mostly just open area. A cathedral and some other main buildings surround the plaza, home to about a zillion pigeons.

Then it was on to Barcelona. We arrived in the evening. After dinner we were dropped off downtown to see the fountains. Barcelona has one of the most spectacular water fountain displays in the world. I hope the pictures come out. They were a bit tricky, requiring some fairly slow shutter speeds, as did the pictures from the cathedral I took today. Without a tripod I´m concerned they may be blurry, but we´ll see.

I enjoyed today, taking in the cathedral, the Picasso museum, and this wonderful park with an extensive network of pathways and buildings all designed by the architect Antoni Gaudi. After the fountains last night though was a different story. We´d gone as a group, over 40 of us, and then took the subway from there to a stop near La Rambla, the heart of the downtown nightlife, and the gothic quarter for a late night tour followed by some bar hopping.

Well we´d been warned to watch for pick pocketers, and to give one thing away, no one in our group got picked. But right after seeing the fountains, we waited to board the subway at about 11:30, and spotted 4 men scoping out the group in the subway station. One of the men had already been spotted by a group member near the fountains trying to steal some lady´s camera. The other 3 were together and very clearly checking everyone out, seeing what they might find. That put everyone on edge. Then while our manager led us through some of the streets in the gothic quarter to see the architecture, we heard a woman scream and saw a man across the square run off. We saw the woman a few minutes later and fortunately she´d just manage to stop him from making off with her purse. After the gothic quarter tour, our manager led us to some pub she wanted us to go to for sangria. It was off the main drag, down a couple narrow, dirty, graffitied streets, which I later saw are very common here. The pub itself was a grungy almost cavelike structure. In fact one slang term for barhopping here is caving. It was crowded and hot as hell. Most of us looked around, saw still more very shady looking people, and left right away. Even out on the main street in La Rambla, there are many very shady looking people and serious pickpocket problems. Ridiculous. I don´t see what the appeal of nightlife is here and most of the group didn´t either. About ten of us took a long walk looking for a nice pub while most people went back early, couldn´t even find a good pub, had a drink outside a tolerable establishment, and left.

So... I loved seeing some things in Barcelona during the day, but the nightlife sucks. The atmosphere, the overall vibe, of the nightlife in Ibiza is so many times better.

That´s about it for now. I´m leaving with the group shortly to go to a dinner and Flamenco show. We have a fairly long drive followed by a ferry ride to Ibiza tomorrow.