Se Me Cayó Un Botón

…de mi chaqueta [one of my buttons has come off my coat]. And I need the whole world to know about it because I’m not one of these modern men that knows how to sew buttons back on! I’m going to keep harking on about it until somebody offers to help me. 😀

After postponing plans for a day-trip to Pamplona (unintentional alliteration there, sorry) for around 3 weeks due to dodgy weather, we finally went last Saturday. It’d been a while since I’d been out of Soria so I was excited for a little excursion.

We took the 11am bus there and the 1am bus back the next day. It sounds miserable but it was necessary: we didn’t need to spend the night there so we had enough time to wander the streets calmly and still get to experience the night-life and tapas. Asides from the obligatory Menu del Día, we did lots of cool things like walk the Encierro route (that the bulls run along during San Fermines), walk along the Murallas, go in the Cathedral and accompanying exhibition and randomly joined a walking drum concert.

Easily the best Ayuntamiento building I’ve ever seen! The bulls run past this iconic building during the Encierro and into the small plaza in front.

All-in-all, it was a great day-out, lots of interesting new experiences (like the Basque language) and old (stumbled into a strike in the main square at one point). Now I can tick Navarra off the list of Spanish regions I’ve visited.

Team Pamplona in Plaza del Castillo at the end of the day.

Elsewhere on Soria Shore:

>Five months in and I’ve finally gotten round to getting a Carnet Joven (youth card). This gives me all kinds of discounts on things so looking forward to getting money off because of my juventud. On the way out, a woman working there practically begged us to go and check out this Plasticine Exhibition made by children of Castilla y Leon. It told a brief history of cities in the region via stills made of plasticine. Luckily we saw it on its last day before it moved on. It was a stunning, but badly-promoted, display: thank you persistent lady!

This was the only one to do with Soria at the Plasticine Exhibition. Still remarkable and pain-stakingly detailed.

>I joined the gym, to do the opposite of what most people go there to do… gain weight! Anyone who knows me will know that I’ve been pencil-thin for a long time, so I finally decided to join the gym properly and have paid to go 3 times a week for a month, so now I cannot escape. Anyone who knows me will also know that I like to get good value for money, so I’m definitely aprovechar-ing my membership by making good use of my exercise plan and learning lots of useful gym vocabulary which is sure to help me in my final year oral exam. Hopefully by the end of the year I should no longer have to fear being blown into the road by strong winds…

>Went to go and watch Almodóvar’s latest offering, Los Amantes Pasajeros, which was wonderfully weird and overly sexually suggestive, but then again I expected nothing less from P.A. Worth a watch if you’re open-minded, have a sense of humour and can cope with awkward sex scenes… Afterwards we went to a fantastic Irish concert in an Irish bar fronted by our non-Irish language assistant friends, Shane and Harmony. They were amazing.

>So the next big excursion will take place during Semana Santa (Holy Week/Easter) after I return to Spain after a few days in England for a wedding. Finally I have transport and accommodation all booked; I’ll be travelling to Jerez de la Frontera, Cádiz and Sevilla. Looking forward to it so much: bit of beach, warmth and my first experience of the beautiful region of Andalucía. You’ll be sure to hear all about it on here!

Remember my blog-post, 5 Awkward Besito Moments? Well the wonderful people at TYA do and they asked if they could republish it on their site. You can read the edited version here.

Until next time!