Camino de Santiago, Day 3—From Zubiri to Pamplona

~20.4 km

By Noemi NemethPublished 5 years ago • 4 min read

Even though our albergue wasn’t the best, but the view was amazing. It’s sitting next to a river at the foot of a hill. Says enough I think…

Today supposed to be a short day after yesterday’s super-long one, so we weren’t rushing. Left in the last minute, 8 AM sharp—usually, they are kicking you out early in the morning from the hostels. Also, at night around 11 PM is lights out, gates locked. Good night if you got back on time… if you did not? Well, too bad. We had some breakfast and walked around a bit in this cute town.

By the way, later on, I will put out a post with all the albergues [hostels in Spanish] where I stayed, with addresses, information, facilities, prices, and a booking link to make your life a bit easier if you're ever gonna start planning your own Camino. I just don’t wanna put waaay too many stuff into each daily post, and I think it’s better if you have all the accommodation informations in the same place. So stick around, this one will be a long series, 'cause I just started to share my Camino experience with you…

My feet were okay today, as long as it’s flat I can manage, but I have no time to heal. The Compeed plaster it’s not really helping, or to be honest I don’t know what’s going on underneath it. I’ve been told not to take it off as long as it’s not falling off by itself. I just feel the pressure—maybe the bubble wants to grow, but it can’t because of the plaster. Maybe my shoes are small or not fitting me well. Some people said that I need different socks. Well… I’m not an experienced hiker. I just bought shoes in the hiking section of the shop, socks, and backpack with very little knowledge about all this stuff. And instead of a beginner 10 kilometers hike I jumped into the deep water and started with the Camino de Santiago—8oo kilometers, thank you very much.

So, I don’t know what’s wrong at the moment. Hopefully, I will just get used to the daily walking and my shoe will get the shape of my feet soon. I don’t know. Maybe tomorrow will be better, 'cause we arrived to Pamplona very fast today, it wasn’t a long or hard walk. For tonight I booked a hotel, so I will have a good rest and be brand new by tomorrow—or at least that’s my plan. Although I have to take a look around in Pamplona because this city is very beautiful and has some special things in it.

We arrived straight to the old town surrounded by the original defensive walls. The city was super quiet, it was a Saturday so probably everybody was still sleeping —that's the Spanish way.

We were super early, I couldn’t even check in to my hotel yet. I met a 73-year-old pilgrim woman in the lounge area, with her backpack and her stick—walking the Camino. I was amazed by her, seriously. I mean I was about to quit… how many times, exactly, in the past three days? 43?

Age doesn’t exist on the Camino.

Learned that pretty fast.

73… 30… 12? Who cares. I had the best talks with a 66-year-old man—cheers, Ray—and jammed to 50Cent with a 15-year-old boy. Sometimes I was so tired, walked slow, and suddenly a great aged Road Runner was just like *beep beep* and I was like what the fuck, tried to keep up but couldn’t. I don’t know what are they taking, but I need it. Seriously.

Aaanyway.

Loved it, so amazing. It was great to finally see some proper civilization and a bigger Spanish city with all them #goodvibesonly.

I straight away felt alive, and spent the afternoon and evening sightseeing. It felt like someone had pushed the OFF button on my pain receptors. I was just so happy to wander around in Spain, where I really wanna be and explore everything. The weather was great, no more rain, no more fog… It’s like yes, this is it, those Spanish vibes I’m dying for.

First of all, these houses…

Pamplona is a beautiful, green city that stole my heart with all the parks, historical buildings, the old moats I was mentioning, and a riverside.

I could just wander around on these streets for hours…

The city was so vibrant, there was definitely some fiesta or something on the main square this evening. First I was like yussss, it’s the San Fermin and I am here at that special time of the year—greatest news ever! And then I realized it was probably just a casual Saturday night—clearly, 'cause there wasn’t any bull up in my ass. Oh well… next time. It was amazing, people hanging out on the streets, music playing, bars and restaurants are full… super cool, so many things to do.

Too bad I couldn’t spend an extra rest day here. My heart definitely would want it, so as my feet. But that would put me off schedule. I mean, I don’t have a really tight time schedule, but it’s too early to make some changes. And I know myself—I will want an extra day in all of the major cities and in the end I will never go home.

So my only two planned rest days are gonna be in Burgos and in Leon.

We will see…

San Fermín festival

The San Fermín festival is a week-long fiesta from the sixth of July till the 14th. The most famous part of it is the Bull Run. Besides that, it contains many more historical and traditional events. Thanks to Ernest Hemingway, it became super popular, with over 1,000,000 people arriving to participate in this festival and to see the bulls. It slowly became the most internationally known fiesta in Spain.

Basically, it's hundreds of people running on the streets in the Old Town, while six bulls are chasing them.

Yea.

And, well… at least the bulls can have a few minutes of revenge before they're gonna get killed in the arena—'cause every now and then there are some accidents on the streets, sometimes people can get fatal injuries. So do the bulls, though, later on.

Ah, let’s just not get into this, I think.

Since I had no chance to experience this week of pure fiesta yet, I don’t think there’s more I could say. I don’t wanna cut pieces of information from websites and create my version with zero background to it.

But hopefully, one day I can go, and share that experience with you.

‘Till then you can read more about this if you click on this link: San Fermín