Behind the Photo | A trip worth waiting for

The final day's festivities of Pamplona's annual, twice cancelled, San Fermin Festival 2022.

You can take a plane, train, or car to Pamplona, but it still took me more than two decades to get there.

I’m not sure when I read my first Hemingway or when I was first inspired by his adventurous, but tumultuous life, but I do know I was enchanted by Spain from the moment of my first visit. A carefree spring break from my semester studying in Brussels.

That week was so enjoyable that after graduating from college a year later, a close friend and I booked a trip to wander around Spain for two weeks visiting any city, town or site that perked our interest. (It was easier to have such unplanned fun before I’d developed a taste for predictability and comfortable accommodations.)

That semester abroad really sparked a curiosity and desire in me to travel – and to travel far and

wide, which is one reason it took me so long (21 years) to get back to Spain.

When I finally had the time and the means to visit Pamplona for the San Fermin Festival, and its famed Running of the Bulls, gorgeously romanticized by Hemingway’s 1926 The Sun Also Rises, it was August 2019. The event is the same eight days in July every year, but I’m a planner, so it was essential to secure a balcony space above the well-worn cobblestone streets to watch the adrenaline-packed three minutes well in advance.

Because of my love of planning, we were well on our way to having a weeklong trip around Spain and a few days in Portugal coordinated by the end of 2019. Air travel purchased, hotels booked, itineraries sketched out – all built around the bulls of Pamplona.

As you’ve likely guessed, our preparation was of little consequence when the world quite literally shut down in 2020 and events like the Running of the Bulls, when visitors of all ages from all around the world converge on a single city in northern Spain, would most definitely qualify as a super spreader event.

The whole thing was cancelled - not once, but twice.

But here it is, 2022. While not seamless, I made it to Pamplona. How walking the winding streets or watching the actual event made me feel is relevant, but for another post. The important message for this photo is persistence.

This photo had twenty years of history before I ever arrived in Pamplona.