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.
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