Pamplona

 On Saturday, September 10th, we started with a walking tour of Pamplona, led by a local guide--Francisco himself, who is a native and current resident of the city.  First was coffee at Cafe Iruña, Ernest Hemingway's principal hangout in Pamplona.  Hemingway put the city on the map by his description, in The Sun Also Rises, of the running of the bulls at the annual Festival of San Fermin.  Without that, San Fermin would have been a typical local Spanish patron-saint fiesta, instead of an internationally-famous event, drawing more than a million people every year.

Next was the Cathedral.

Then we went to a bullfighting museum inside a private home, where we had wine and pintxos.

On our way to lunch, we passed through a neighborhood holding a fiesta, with giant-headed figures and Basque nationalist banners and even a mariachi band (Mexican music is apparently popular in Spain)!

Lunch was at a men's club devoted to getting together to cook meals--with women only as invited guests.  There are apparently a number of them in the area.

As we returned to our hotel, we saw that the street festival had turned into a street dinner.

Meanwhile, there was another festival, along with an open-air market, going on at the Plaza del Castillo.  "Giants," large figures of fantastic animals, danced around to the accompaniment of a band of folk instruments.

There was also a group of some sort of medieval barbarians, with jesters juggling and doing flips.

That evening, a group of us went to mass at the Church of San Saturnino.  It has an odd structure, with two naves at right angles, in a "T" shape, one dedicated to the chapel of the Virgen del Camino.

Mary Joy and I, for lack of other ideas, went back to Gaucho for dinner.  Outside, a young local woman invited us to join her, her husband (or boyfriend) and a Belgian couple at a table.  Her English was very good, but her husband's wasn't, yet when he heard that we were from Minnesota, he, a Bob Dylan fan, asked us what our favorite Dylan song was!  The only one I could think of on the spur of the moment was "Blowin' in the Wind!"