Day 156 - 157 : Pamplona

Pamplona is located just 1 hour away from San Sebastian.

It's always a bonus and a blessing when the weather forecast indicated rain during the period I am there, but all I had was nice sunny weather with some cloudy patches. 

It was also warm enough to be wearing flip flops outside - the new shoes are harder than I expected, and my feet are more tired than usual and just needed to give the feet a break.

I so miss wearing shorts and flip flops 😔

Pamplona is famous for "The Run of the Bulls" that happen from July 7 - 14.
The Bulls run from Calle de la Estafeta and all the way into the Plaza de Toros (Bull Ring)

Calle de la Estafeta where the Bulls run, is a super narrow street, and will be filled with lots of people trying to run from the bulls during the event.

The city is surrounded by a medieval fortress wall. And the views outside the wall.

There's also a huge Citadel in Pamplona. Constructed between the 16th and 17th centuries in the city of Pamplona, it's said to be the best example of military architecture from the Spanish Renaissance.

It has a combined surface area of 280,000 square meters. It's structure has the form of a regular pentagon with five bastions in its corners.

The buildings within the Citadel are still in very good condition, and are now used as an exhibition space.

Structurally it looks really nice on the inside. Exhibits however not so great 😝

This other space called "Oven" was used to hold gun powder in the past and the exhibits inside this space were very strange.

Here's a good depiction of Pamplona city within the fortress walls, and the pentagon shaped Citadel in the corner.

I also went to visit Fort of San Bartolome, with it's semi circle structure.

Some other places worth visiting include Plaza del Castillo in the old town, which is a square filled with nice buildings.

Roaming the streets of the old town.

Jardines de la Taconera, gardens with a section with animals, including deers!

Food wise, places I went to and would recommend are

Bodegón Sarria - appears it is listed on Michelin. I went in for their Pintxos and ordered 1 coquette and 1 foie gras on bread with a glass of cider. The cider was good!

Bar La Granja Pamplona - they have very reasonably priced set lunches that comes with 2 plates, wine (I was given a whole bottle, so I suppose it's drink as much as you want!), and a dessert or tea/coffee. Food is average but I didn't expect too much for the price.

I probably had close to half a bottle through the meal 😝

I started with a seafood paella and ordered a meatballs dish for my 2nd plate. I have to admit, the colour of the meatballs doesn't look too appealing when served. Taste wise it wasn't too bad.

And ended off with a slice of cheesecake.

And the most highly recommended is Iruñazarra. Another bar famous for Pintxos, I was attracted by the display.

I ordered 1 pintxo from the display with no idea what it was before ordering... After cutting it up and eating it, I was still clueless 😂

Definitely meat, which had a slight gamey taste. To a certain extent it also reminded me of the filling inside a rice dumpling (bak zhang)

The counter staff then gave me a complimentary croquette!

I think I was the only one who got it. He was talking very rapidly and it was noisy, but I did catch him say it was made using mushrooms and its called "Champion" (possibly because mushrooms is called champignon).

This was really good! I could definitely taste the truffles in it too.

I was planning to have a light dinner, but because he was nice and the food tasted good, I decided to order more stuff!

He suggested I order this - Irati, a creation created this year for some pintxo competition they take part in annually.

I definitely didn't do it justice with my picture. It should look exactly like the one pictured in their flyer above (translated via Google translate, thus the weird English). I was told to eat it in 2 different bites, from the right to the left. Explosion of taste in the mouth.

And then I saw someone being served this which looked really amazing that I had to order it too!

It's called Iruñanguilazarra - according to their ingredients description that had been translated... Crunchy quinoa, guacamole, salmorejo, smoked eel, red seaweed pearls, black seaweed, ginger, ham flakes and tangerine flower.

The red seaweed and black seaweed tasted more like caviar / roe to me.

This item apparently won the pintxo award in 2016.

They had 2 other items in their menu that was also award winning, but they either weren't serving it tonight or had ran out. Probably a good thing too, cos I might had over ordered! 😝

The staff who gave me the complimentary croquette, had a really fun positive attitude while serving customers and if I had more time in Pamplona, I would have returned here to try other items on their menu.