Our last morning in Paris started rough because we got only an hour of sleep each after seeing the Eiffel Tower light up at 1 am and packing our bags in our hotel. We had to leave our hotel by 5:45a.m. which meant we needed to be up around 5:30 to have enough time to get our huge bags down the four flights of stairs. At this point we realized that all future hotels and hostels MUST have a lift!! Our bags thudded down the dark winding staircase, loud enough to wake the hotel owner - no, they still refused to help with baggage, however he did call us a taxi who drove us to Gare de Montparnasse to catch our train. We grabbed some quick coffees (european coffees are 2-inch tall espresso shots) and a sandwich (everything in Europe is wrapped in a bagguette or bread).
Finally on the train, we realized that Nicole and I were not sitting together, and were actually 5 cars apart. I sat next to an old french couple and their grandaughter who sat drawing pictures and speaking the cutest french. It was a quad-seating where we all faced each other and I could tell I was just as interesting to them as they were to me. They kept asking me to switch seats, but knew NO english so I had to follow the woman's pointing finger and facial expressions to understand. They didn't want their granddaughter to face backwards on the train, so I obliged. I put on my eyemask, turned on my iPod and watched the train depart from Paris in the early morning sun. Next thing I knew I was sawing logs, when Nicole nudged me and said she had an extra seat in her compartment. I went up and spent the rest of the train ride sleeping in her "voit", or car section.
[Some information about where we are headed: About two months ago, when Nicole and I were trying to decide our itinerary, we knew we wanted to see Running with the Bulls, but were finding it expensive and difficult to make reservations anywhere near Pamplona, where the festival is held. I stumbled upon The Fanatics, recommended by a fellow Eurotrip.com user, and immediately put a deposit down after spending 10 minutes on their site. Basically they offer a campsite in San Seb (one hour outside of Pamps) where you can sleep, get bussed into town and hang out with some crazy Aussie sportsfans, although the past few years they've started incorporating Americans and Brits into the mix. We booked 3 nights and 4 days with them which included the Opening Ceremony, 2 mornings of running with the bulls and the bull ring, a night of fireworks and a relaxing final day to sleep in and pack up. We would later learn there was no such thing as "relaxing" on this trip.]
We made it to Irun, where we raced to meet our next train - luckily it departed 15 minutes late, because we had to haul our bags through security, where I was yelled at by a spanish female guard for not moving my bags off the conveyer. I've never seen anyone take something so personally before!! We got on our next train where we met James, aka "Jimmy", an old traveler (probably in his mid to late 60's) who shared his tales of travel for the past few weeks. When we arrived in San Sebastian, we realized that we had no address or directions for how to get to our campsite and no one was able to help us. Jimmy said that he would drive us in his rental car as soon as he got it and we found out where we were going. Since we arrived at 1:30, everyone was on Siesta and nothing was open, so we sat on a bench and waited. My good friend Taylor, who was my best friend in junior high that I had not seen in 5 years, was arriving at 4:30 , headed to our same campsite, and I was banking on him having more details. Thankfully he did. He got off his train, with no expectation of seeing us waiting for him, and I grabbed him with a big hug. (By the way, I shortly remembered that it was my birthday today!) Jimmy had just gotten his rental car at this point and said he could drive us all to our site - there was no way we could pass up a free ride and since Taylor was with us, I felt more comfortable accepting a ride from a stranger. Jimmy took us to the most beautiful site-seeing viewpoints in San Seb since he had been there before and knew where to go. He was a crazy driver and stalled the car at least 20 times. When he finally got us to our site, we realized he was hoping to hang out with us more and asked if he could stay at our camp...Um, no. We told him we had a strict itinerary and reservations had to be made in advance. We thanked him for the ride, but we knew he was disappointed. This became the first laughing matter.
Checking in: Here is where we met Jules for the first time, sitting in the Marquee (big white tent), checking in the newcomers. She was our campsite manager and kept things as organized as possible. We paid for our mattresses and got our tent numbers, then made our way to our new temporary homes. Nicole and I were in tent 28, and Taylor was in 29 nearby. As luck would have it, in tent 27, we would find 2 girls from Flower Mound, Texas, Eurotripping for months at a time, just as we were! After we settled in, we all met at the campsite bar for some cervezas and tapas (I had the most amazing jalapeno balls!) Again, everyone shared their travel stories and talked about where they were headed - - a common theme so far amongst fellow travelers. It is so neat to meet people with the same goals and outlook on traveling as us and it makes us realize we are all different, yet the same.
After "freshening up" we all headed on the bus 16 to head into the historical part of San Seb, to the music bar Tas Tas. We stopped for some quick tapas first: I got most tortilla tapas (my new favorite dish, although now quite sick of it) and Nicole got some crazy seafood stuff, including octopus which totally grossed me out! Now in Tas Tas, the music was playing, we were dancing and we were meeting more and more Fanatics. The whole club sang "Happy Birthday" to me and I got several free drinks. We ended up catching a taxi home, although we wouldn't learn that until the following morning after seeing pictures of us in a cab. We were convinced we had taken the bus 16 back to camp and all of us accepted that as the truth until photos proved otherwise...can you say party too much?
At this point Nicole was ready to head to bed, but Taylor and I hung out in the marquee with camp coordinator Moose and a few others to smoke a bit (sorry folks, it's Europe and Rick Steves does say to "immerse yourself in culture"). When I finally got to the tent, I realized it had flooded and our stuff was sitting in an inch of rain water. Nicole was sleeping and the water hadn't reached her yet, but I quickly tried to get our clothes, cameras, laptops and things out of the water. Sleeping in the tent was miserable! We decided NOT to buy sleeping bags, since we were already hauling too many kilos of luggage each, but would regret this sincerely. I used my towel as a pillow and dressed in the several layers to stay warm without a blanket. I would be bruised by the end of the trip from sleeping on the hard ground, separated by a thin foam mat and layer of tarp. The next morning we would be up by the crack of dawn to make it to Pamps for the Opening Ceremony. The craziness was just about to start...
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