Let me start out with saying — If you never want to run alongside a bull… that’s okay. You can still make this apart of your trip and have an amazing experience at Pamplona’s Running of the Bulls / San Fermín Festival. In fact, I didn’t run and it was one of the most amazing cultural experiences I’ve ever had. I ask you to keep an open mind, and let me try to convince you to add this to your bucket list.

What they don’t tell you about the Festival of San Fermín

I’ll go into most of these specifically, but here’s the overall notes.

It’s relatively easy to get to Pamplona — get there by train from Madrid or Barcelona.
Plan this trip with good, easy going company. This is not a part of your trip that you can have an itinerary for.
Housing will be expensive. Even the most modest Airbnb’s will cost a very pretty penny — expect around $600-800 for 2 nights inside the city. You’ll want/need to stay there if you plan on running. Outside that, everything else is relatively cheap.
The city and the people don’t stop — neither does the drinking.
You don’t have to run to experience the full effect of the festival.
Like Vegas, 48 hours is enough to really get the full feeling of the event.
Bring 2 pairs of plain white items that you don’t care to ruin. Seriously.

You don’t have to run with the bulls

I’ll repeat - I did NOT run. I decided to get an amazing view of the action instead. If you’re going with people that want to run, they shouldn’t get blacked out drunk the night before. Runners need to be in line super early, and the people organizing the festival will take you out of line if you’re intoxicated. If you want a great view on the running trail, you will need to be up even EARLIER. At around 6am, I walked down the 900-yard run, and all the railing spots were taken. So, I walked to the end and paid 5 Euros to get a view from the stadium AND saw the entertainment inside once the bulls run into the stadium. Totally worth it.

There is the option of renting a balcony to watch the bulls. If I went with a bigger group, and a few more people that didn’t want to run, I would have done it. It’s an amazing option if you can get on the bull path.

The matador bull fight - the night’s biggest attraction

This is probably the one thing to look into ahead of time based on the nights you’re there. Through most of Spain, bullfights have been outlawed. During the San Fermín Festival, they have a matador bull fight every night where, yes, they do kill bulls. The bullfight is truly an art for the matador. The part where the bulls had to die was hard to watch BUT… we ended up sitting a section next to amazing locals, who welcomed us into their crowd. They brought food and homemade wine inside the stadium. At the end, we got to climb down into the main pit to take some photos.

The city culture

I love European cities. Absolutely adore them. For Pamplona, you have to look past all the garbage on the ground because of the masses amount of people there. Every street crawled with crowds of people, and the people had charming attitudes. Everyone is there to have a good time. Every bar you can walk up, buy a drink, and walk around with it. The ambiance is matched to probably a Mardi Gras.

If I could do it all over again…

I would be there for the start of the festival on the very first day.
Go with more people, and splurge for a balcony view.
Not plan this festival as the last leg of my trip. This was the last part of my 3 week trip between Croatia and Spain — I was pretty pooped by the time I got there.
Bring some alcohol with into Pamplona. I don’t drink beer or Sangria, so walking up to a bar was a tad difficult at times when that’s the only 2 things they would sell.