Days sixteen and seventeen

Not sure where one ends and the other begins.
Woke up and went to San Sebastian, a city about an hour away, on the coast, where Inigo goes to uni. Pretty much just slept in the car on the way there. We walked around a lot when we were there and went on a bus tour of the city. It’s pretty beautiful, and very old, and has fairly interesting history of changing sea levels and rebuilding after wars and a whole bunch of things we never get in Australia. On the bus, I listened to music with Diego which was awesome because he had foo fighters and jet and other really awesome bands on his phone. I also got a lot closer to him which is good because he’s pretty awesome, but I’m always hanging out with his brother which is disappointing. But then he started being creepy and licking me and stuff (not as weird as it sounds, but close) and we were having mock fights and stuff. His mum thought we were acting like boyfriend and girlfriend, dad thought we were acting like cousins, Montxo thought we were acting like sisters. Either way, I’m just glad to have cousins my age that I can talk to and muck around with and listen to music on a bus with. I’ve never had that.
After the tour we had lunch at a restaurant near the water, and after that I think Diego and I both fell asleep on the table (I needed it, trust me) and then we walked back over to the beach where Inigo rang and said he’d finished his exam. He’d done “not good. Not bad but not good.” Unfortunate. We took a funicular (an icular of fun) up one of the mountains where they had a kind of mini theme park and we ate some churros and chilled out and everything was sunshine and lollipops.
Eventually we took the funicular down the mountain again, walked to the car, and drove home. By then it was about ten o’clock and Inigo was in a hurry to get into Pamplona to drink away his uni woes (not what he said, but we all knew it) so we had about four minutes to change into white clothes, cut a bread roll in half and race to the bus stop. We were successful.
In Pamplona, Inigo, Diego, Nikki and I walked around looking for cheap sandwiches and then I did a transplant on mine into my gluten free bread roll. Diego went to join his friends, and Inigo, Nikki and I bought a bottle of rum and a bottle of coke and headed to the fireworks. We caught up with a bunch of Inigo’s friends, some from home and some from uni, and watched the fireworks with them before going to a concert.
Spanish people tend to be a little afraid of speaking English until they’ve had a bit to drink so Nikki and I spoke mainly to each other and Inigo for the first few hours. We also grilled Inigo about his personal life and why he doesn’t have a girlfriend (and informed him that he’s a player. He seemed excited by this new word.) And then a few of his friends started talking to us and we felt like part of the group and it was all good. For the next five or so hours we went from bar to bar in Pamplona. Same routine everywhere; follow one of the group in, find space, dance fairly slowly until someone has a drink/feels brave and then start dancing crazily with everyone and we find them so hilarious that they join in. Highlights of Inigo’s drunkenness include him dancing with his own reflection, picking Nikki and I up at the same time, sweating so much that we could gel his hair with it, and picking me up with a friend and throwing me in the air in the middle of the street. Several times. I thought I was going to die.
At around five or six we finally stopped the drinking and dancing and went in search of kebabs for breakfast (yeah, apparently that’s an international thing). We also went looking for the band that plays at sunrise, but although it’s very famous here, no one actually knows where it is so we decided instead to go to the bull ring. From there we watched the running of the bulls on tv screens and then watched a few games they do with the calves who were very cute. Inigo spent most of the time falling asleep on my shoulders and lap, but woke up every time the crowd cheered. We also DNMed about life problems and exams and how he thinks “woman” and “complicated” are synonyms. And my life is now complete :D
After the bulls, we went to a hotel thing where Montxo works and got some free beer (to wash down the kebabs) and then finally, FINALLY went home. Got home at about 10 and slept until about 1 when dad woke us up to get ready for lunch. We were picked up by a cousin (Beatriz) at 2 to go to her mum’s house and had a really nice lunch with them. Her kids were the cutest things ever and I have a photo with them in their car :) Also, they loved my tim tams
After lunch we came home and slept for a couple of hours and then got up, got ready, and went out again, this time with a different second cousin. Her name is Oihane and she is the prettiest person in the universe and I’m so glad I’m related to her. But her English isn’t very good so Nikki and I had a bit of trouble communicating. We watched the fireworks with her and her work friends, one of the guys there had spent a year on exchange in the US so he basically translated for us the whole time. We hung out in the park that the fireworks were in for a good few hours, getting very cold whilst the whole group got very drunk. Then we went to a bar for a few hours. Although it was nice to hang out with a different cousin, we didn’t have much in common with her and her English speaking friend went home reasonably early so we just kind of stood around awkwardly a lot. At 4am we decided to call Inigo to see what he was up to, and he came to get us with his friend and we went to a few more bars before getting breakfast kebabs and coming home at around 6:30. The bus that promised to come at about 5:45 didn’t come until 6:10 which was really bloody annoying. But we got home and we had some (not much) sleep and that was the end of a crazy 48 hours.

Sorry it’s taken me so long to post this, so fucking tired and busy. But this is what it’s all about, right?