happy new york

As stated previously News Years is a big deal in Pamplona.
It's not like running of the bulls where thousands of people from all over the world come. It's more of a local Pamplona thing that people from Pamplona do.
Starting around the late 80s or 90s a group of people started to dress in Halloween costumes on New Years and bar crawl throughout the streets of Pamplona. To this day, it's now a tradition. Every New Years, the local people of Pamplona dress up in elaborate costumes go to the bars and drink and dance the night away until sunrise.
But before all that craziness, let's start with the dinner.
Made by my mother and my aunt, we had different kinds of plates to pick on along with red wine and some champagne.

Everyone at the table

From left to right:

My aunt Rosita, uncle Peio, Andrea, Nahiara, Uncle Peio's mom, Peio's sister and husband, myself, my sister, her boyfriend and my mom's finger.

We ate and talked until 11:50 when the champagne and the raisins were brought out.

Spanish Fun Fact #4: On New Years Eve when the ball is dropping and the countdown is going we put one raisin in our mouth and chew as fast as we can in between 1 second breaks or until we have 10 raisins in our mouth.

Not the best picture of me and my sister but it was the only one that showed the raisins.

Also my phone is up in the air to take a video of what was going on, which I was going to place on this blog but then it got deleted because my iPhone ran out of capacity.

Ooops. 

Happy New Years 

Love Ivonne, Daniel, Estibaliz & Ana (in spirit my dad- he's in the champagne)

After celebrating the New Year and giving New Year kisses and drinking more champagne and stuffing my face with chocolate we quickly got ready in our costumes to go out and celebrate in the street.

Our story about our costumes: When we arrived in Spain we had no idea what we were going to dress up as. 3 years earlier we were penguins with top hats, but this year was a little different.

My back up plan was to pay tribute to my 3rd home Sweden and dress up as IKEA, with blue pants and a yellow sweater and an IKEA bag for all my goodies.

Then we went to Bilbao and went into a small thrift store that sold clothes at a dirt cheap price.

My sister and I bought neon colored leggings, crazy neon eye liner, and sparkled bows.

We were going to be unicorns.

Her boyfriend bought a Chinese man outfit and was a Chinese man.

All that for under 10 Euros.

I know the costumes seemed weird and a little offensive to some but it was 8 hours before New Years and we hadn't had a set idea on costumes...so yeah we went for it.

All dressed up and ready to we walked to a family friend's house, had a drink and then went to the streets of Pamplona to celebrate.

Also side note: It was about 20 degrees when we went outside, so those leggings and sweater I was wearing did not help.

When you dress up for New Years, you also have to think about warmth and that you are outside the majority of the night.

This is the Plaza Castillo, in which you saw in the bright sunny picture on my Pamplona post.

As you can see its dark, and there are tons and tons of people walking around.

This is the bar Cafe Iruña in which will be pictured again after this day.

As you can see it's packed, like really really packed.

After leaving this bar we realized it was 7 in the morning and decided to head back home.

Now another fun fact: my aunt and uncle that we stayed with live outside of Pamplona not IN Pamplona, as it may had seemed.

In our situation it would have seemed smart to catch a cab or a bus back to our place, but (and I am not exaggerating) the line was ridiculously long and it would have taken twice as long to wait than to walk, and we wouldn't have gotten home until like 10AM or maybe even later.

So we walked, in the dark and cold Spanish air for 45 minutes back to my aunt and uncle's house and got home at around 8AM.

We were cold and tired and spent half and hour in the kitchen defrosting with cup of hot chocolate and then snuggled into bed until 2 in the afternoon.

Needless to say, it was a good way to ring in the New Year, a trip to another city, stuffing my face with delicious food and chocolate, dressing up as a unicorn and being with family.

It didn't matter if I wasn't back in my home, home I was back with family and it was just I needed.

beel-bao

December 31st, 2013- New Years Eve
New Years Eve was a long day as it included a day trip, eating way too much, drinking champagne, stuffing raisins in my mouth and dressing up as a unicorn. But we'll get to that later.
Let's start with Bilbao.
As pronounced in the title, Bilbao is a small city about two hours away from Pamplona.

A purse filled with snacks for the 2 hour bus ride.

Candy, Jamón flavored Ruffles (which are actually really good) and Pan de Angel. 

The necessities for a trip.

My sister, her boyfriend and I took a bus at 10AM and arrived at Bilbao at around 12PM and started our tour.

Train Station to get to our destination

Look another clock!

Now one of the main attractions in Bilbao is the hanging bridge that has been hanging around Bilbao for many years. People can walk on the bridge or if afraid of heights go on the cart under the bridge and under it. And if you have a car, you are in luck because that crate full of people who are afraid of heights can place their cars on the cart and get their car carried to the other side of the city.
Pretty nifty huh?
I remember the first time I came to the hanging bridge was 3 years ago when it was just my sister and I.
Our aunt took us to Bilbao to show us and right as we were about to take the elevator up to the bridge a little boy came up to us and said (in Spanish)
"Someone died up there!" (points to the bridge)
Thanks Spanish kid. Thanks.
I think the kid was lying (I hope the kid was lying) because my aunt had no information on such said person dying and was positive that we weren't going to die.
Good, because at that time I was not ready to die at 17 years old and not live to see my high school graduation.
(Off topic, is it weird that the last time I was in Spain I was a teenager in high school? Is it weird that I feel old looking at that? Am I supposed to feel old? Is that what the 20s are about, feeling old as a teenager despite the fact that I was a teenager a year ago...Jesus where did the time go.....)
Fast forward to 3 years later and I'm alive and there was no kid to tell me that I was going to die.
I was going to be ok, guys, I was going to be ok.

This is not the hanging bridge, obviously, 

It's another clock!

This is the walkway on the hanging bridge

As you see it says Puente Vizcaya (Vizcaya Bridge) and as some of you know my mother's maiden name is Vizcay.

(This has no affiliation with the Vizcay part of my mother's name nor the Vizcay side of my family, it's just a coincidence, like that one time I was eating lox while writing about seafood..that kind of coincidence)

You can't see it very well, but this sign says to not jump on the bridge as the part I was one was wobbly and could cause the bridge to shake.

Like a 5 year old, when someone told me not to do something, I did it.

I did not jump. 

I guess I'm mature now. 

This is my new boyfriend.

He's quite stiff as you can see he is quite stiff.

But I don't blame him, I think he was off guard

Note: Credit to my friend Kacey who came up with the last said joke.

Good one. 

View from down the bridge.

Luckily in the picture with my boyfriend you can't tell that it was extremely windy on the bridge.

Like my hair was flying all over the place and it got really really cold, and plus we were waiting 10 minutes for the elevator to take us down. 

It wasn't fun.

After walking on the bridge we walked down Bilbao some more and then stopped for some pintxos for lunch before heading off to another part.

These are the never ending stairs that we found these two boys at.

I have no idea where it leads to but they are probably useful in the summertime when everyone is in bathing suits and swimming in the water.

Not winter time when you are layered in thick pants and the water is freezing cold.

We found an outdoor exercise place!

This is the restaurant where we got our Pintxos, and of course like in Spain we ate around 2pm and it was crowded, so we were lucky to find ourselves a tiny table for the three of us.

(Translation of the Menu: The best medicine is good food. Amen restaurante. Amen)

Picture from left to right .

Left: Croquetas de Roquefort

Right: Bread

Middle: Patatas Bravas

Inside of the Croqueta de Roquefort (which I think was garlic, cheese and something else I forgot. BUT IT WAS SOOOO GOOD)

This is a chicken skewer that we saw everyone in the restaurant eating, so naturally we wanted to see what the big deal was, so we got some ourselves.

We understood what the big deal was, it was good.

This is an Viennese coffee in that it consists of cream, strong coffee and cinnamon.

It was delicious.

Another clock!

Another major attraction in Bilbao is the Guggenheim museum. Filled with modern art and the above dog statue, this museum is famous.

Confession: I've only been inside the Guggenheim once and remember it as being really white with paintings that I don't remember.

This time it had a special exhibit of bathroom installments, like toilets and sinks.

And in the words of my Uncle Peio (in Spanish translated to English): "Well if that's modern art now then we have our own art exhibition in our own home!"

He's totally right though. No offense to modern art, I love it but if I wanted to see a toilet I could have gone to my bathroom and not paid a couple Euros to see one.

But every time we go to Bilbao we always make a pit stop at the Guggenheim to take a picture in front of the dog. It's like a Bilbao tradition.

 After seeing the Guggenheim dog and taking pictures in front of it we crossed a bridge next to it and admired the view of the soon to be sunset.

The wavy looking building is the actual Guggenheim museum and if you look closely on the bottom under the green bars you can see a huge spider statue.

As a person who has arachnaphobia, I refused to go near the statue.

Thanks but no thanks.

This is the University of Bilbao that resides near the Guggenheim museum.

After crossing the bridge we walked more into Bilbao and caught the last train at 7:30PM to await our New Years festivities.

Now mind you that in the next post it's still the same day, just a different activity.