A day out in Pamplona

We were up bright and early this morning for our day out in Pamplona. We caught the number 17 bus, and before we knew it we were in the old town.

Our first port of call was the tourist information centre, to get a map of the town. It wasn’t very well signposted, but we found it eventually after asking a few people for directions. Once we had our map we found a nice cafe to work out our plan of attack over a coffee.

I didn’t know what to expect from Pamplona, as our Lonely Planet guide was a bit light in the ‘things to do’ section. All I knew of the town was the San Fermin fiesta, famous for the running of the bulls, but there’s loads to see and do.

We went for a walk along the city walls, found the local food market, and had a good old wander round the back streets. We also passed a pastry shop with a massive queue, so we kept going.

We stopped for lunch at a lovely bar (pintxos and a caña) and continued exploring the town. The queue for the pastry shop was a lot shorter by now, so we stopped to see what the fuss was all about. They sold homemade pastries and biscuits, but the speciality was what Carol described as a warm sausage roll with chocolate instead of sausage meat.

Being Spain, almost the whole place shut down at 2pm and didn’t reopen until 5pm. We came across an El Corte Inglés department store which stayed open, so we went for a wander round their supermarket – we could have spent a fortune in there! After a walk round the Citadel, and a quick look around the museum (where they have one of the best Roman mosaics I have seen), it was gone 5pm and so we went back into the old town to find somewhere to have dinner.

The Spanish don’t go for dinner until 8pm at the earliest, but we couldn’t wait that long. The only places doing food were bars serving pintxos, and so we went back to the place where we had lunch as the food was so good, and very reasonably priced too. The food was just as good as before, and the icing on the cake was that they served wine produced by my favourite wine makers, Bodegas Ochoa.

Once fed and watered we made our way to the bus stop, caught the number 17, and walked back to the van. According to Carol’s pedometer we have walked 12 miles today.

Tomorrow we will be staying put and having a lazy day doing very little.

Here are some photos:

The food market
The fishmongers
Lovely looking fruit and veg
The Plaza de Toros
Beatriz’s pastry shop
Chocolate roll
Dinner was a hit! €20 including wine

Mike

4 thoughts on “A day out in Pamplona”

  1. In case you were wondering the weather has been awful here, it’s been cold with snow and rain ☔️ on and off for most of the day. Certainly not a day for sightseeing!

  2. Bienvenido a España!!
    Loving the blog!!
    Once you’ve decided where you’re going and when, give us a shout and hopefully we’ll be able to come and meet you!
    A weekend is best. We’re off Fri, Sat & Sun.
    Can’t do next weekend or 4th March!
    Take care & see you soon xx

  3. Glad all going well and that you are having fun. All well here albeit cold and miserable . Love reading the blogs. Stay safe. Have a nice relaxing day. Xxxxx

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