Toro, Toro!

The San Fermin festival in Pamplona, Spain

 – funny red outfits, sangria, bulls and possible death!

We camped about 10 mins outside the city with about 500 fellow idiotic Aussies. We thought the campsite was wild… but that was before we actually got into the heart of the festival! There were literally thousands upon thousands of people in red and white, partying through the streets of Pamplona. We had a great time wandering through, drinking sangria and dancing to the makeshift spanish bands that seemed to spring up everywhere!

[Youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h-9s5LmHJc]

Then we decided to scope out the course that the bulls (and us!) would run, and hunted for local knowledge about the run. Local knowledge turned out to be “don’t do it you crazy foreigners!”

During the summer term, the Ardvreck kids muck about in the ‘Dens and Dams’. 

There is a little bubbling brook that runs through the school. At lunch times and after school, the kids put on their wellies (gumboots) and dam the river! They block it up completely using rocks, mud and leaves, and can completely redirect the course the water follows. They wait for the water to build up behind the dams and then ‘boost’ (knock over)their dam. They all watch and scream as the water cascades down and knocks over everyone elses dam! It’s great fun.

[Youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVVflMLBLTM]

They also make little dens in the forest out of tree branches, leaves, rocks, flowers… anything they can find really. It’s their own little hut that they play in and get very protective of!

Just another couple of days and then i’ll be on my 9 week summer holiday of Europe!

 The plan is:

Fly to London for a couple of days before heading over to Spain to see running of the bulls festival. My money’s on the bull.

Next is to Athens for an ‘easycruise’. We’ll be visiting the Greek Islands and Turkey.

Then back to London to begin my 3 week Topdeck tour of Europe. It’s only for ‘gappies’, so it should be awesome! First we head over to Paris, make our way across to Switzerland, then Nice, Florence, Rome, Venice, Pag Island in Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Prague in the Czech Republic, Germany and Amsterdam before finally returning to London!

I’ll be trying to keep the blog running, but because i’ll be constantly on the move it may prove a ‘wee’ bit difficult.

We visited the Monmatre district, made famous by the Moulin Rouge. Oh yeah, it also happens to have this massive white church – The Sacré-Coeur Basilica. It’s on the peak of a large hill, providing a decent view of central Paris.

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Nearly every night, we would have a picnic in the park overlooking the Eiffel Tower. We’d grab a baguette, some salami and cheese and a few drinks and just sit there and watch the sunset. It was an amazing view!

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We decided to check out the Mona Lisa at the Louvre. Recognise this from the Da Vinci Code?

We followed the signs to the Mona Lisa. And there she was – a tiny, unimpressive picture behind glass and a wall of gawking tourists. The man in the foreground obviously doesn’t seem too impressed.

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One night, we wined and dined French restaurant in a really cool, restaurant district closed off to traffic. We sampled different parts of the French cuisine – in other words, we ate snails.

 
Sort of chewy and a little bit slimy, but they were actually really good! Expensive, but good. Well that’s my story anyway, and i’m sticking to it. Continue reading this post…

On our amble through Paris, we bumped into the Arc de Triomphe.

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For our half-term break, I went to Paris for a week with two gappies from Ardvreck, Kat and Joe. It was awesome!

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Here’s a few pics of the rugby sevens team when we traveled down to England for the tournament at Oundle.

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