Getting Spanish by water and a load of bulls

As another escape from the wonderful UK winter, we'd booked a ferry to Spain and planned some cheap hotel / rental apartment stays that would keep us very amused for a month. After packing way too much stuff, we admired the weather forecast for the Bay of Biscay crossing. Plenty of red in the wave height forecasts:

made us happy to be on a pretty large ferry. They swapped out the ship due to operate the service from one of the normal (Salamanca, Santona) to Galicia. We were very happy to find our cabin was rather larger than those on the "normal" ships and that the bed had morphed into a double, not the two singles we'd become used to with Brittany Ferries. Pretty palatial for a simple ferry really and great for the two nights on board:

although we made it look a bit scruffy with our bags and stuff:

The crossing was a little bit bumpy and a quiet ferry became very very quiet thanks to the weather. Walking along the corridors was slightly more challenging than normal and the Club lounge was pretty deserted:

which worked for us. Having some form of sea-legs from our boating on the Nordhavn maybe helped us survive unscathed and manage the meals provided too.

After a good crossing (well, it was for us anyway) the drive to Pamplona reminded us why travelling by car in Spain is so good:

Empty motorways, lovely scenery, cheaper fuel and decent coffee at sensible prices in most service areas too. Our first stop was Pamplona. Most folks will have heard of it thanks to the annual bull-run madness. Look at this Bull run TV report video link for the full crazy experience.

We wandered happily around the town and of course the bull ring too. Rather different statues than you would normally see in cities:

and plenty of celebration of the long standing but to us seriously weird bull fighting tradition:

The rather odd people who take part get celebrated in some huge posters hanging outside the ring:

We felt that this cartoon was probably more accurate about how some of the participants in the run itself felt:

Enough about bulls. (Note how we resisted using the phrase "a lot of old bull" anywhere in this post - you should be impressed with our self control). The cathedral was, like many in Spain, stunningly beautiful. They were keen to maintain a hushed environment:

and to be fair, the building kind of encouraged that itself. Lots of open mouthed folks wandering about gazing at the opulence:

Not all the beautiful buildings were ecclesiastical though:

and a good wander around was most enjoyable:

The only sad bit about our three nights there was that the apartment hotel we were staying in had some electrical gremlins. None of the power sockets in the kitchenette area worked, no microwave either. Reporting it was a waste of time although the staff were ultra friendly and nice. One day we returned to find our electronic key cards would not work. The two new ones re-programmed by the receptionist also failed. Her master key failed. Yup, we were locked out. She had to find the device they use to configure the lock itself, plug it into the door, re-code it and finally we were reunited with our belongings. 

Mind you, a non-functioning kitchen area forced us to eat out and there were some good, sensibly priced restaurants.... Very interesting place all in all. The best coffee shop in town was still reasonably priced too:

Two excellent coffees for the price of one at Costa in a UK motorway service area. And this place was expensive compared to all those that followed. There were a few....