Meet in Plaza Castillo for a brief introduction to Hemingway’s Pamplona.After a brief explication we jump in the tour bus and we take a delightful drive to the Pyrenees.
Hemingway was first encouraged to travel to Pamplona for the San Fermin celebrations by Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. These two women, who lived in Paris and had included Hemingway and his wife Hadley into their circle of expatriate writers and artists, had been in Pamplona during the Fiesta the previous year. They felt it was essential for Hemingway, the keen observer of life and a budding writer, to experience the fiesta for himself. He was smitten not only by the life and energy of the fiesta itself, but also by the mystery and drama of bull fighting.
HEMINGWAY PLACES IN PLAZA CASTILLO
Bar Txoko
Hotel Quintana - ‘Hotel Montoya’
Café Bar Torino - ‘Bar Milano’
Hotel La Perla
Café Iruña
Café Suizo (no longer there)
Café Kutz (no longer there)
Las Pocholas / Hostal del Rey Noble
“It was baking hot in the square when we came out after lunch with our bags and rod-case to go to Burguete. People were on top of the bus, and others were climbing up the ladder. Bill went up and Robert sat beside Bill to save a place for me, and I went back to the hotel to get a couple of bottles of wine to take with us… Robert Cohn stood in the share of the arcade waiting for us to start. A Basque with a big leather wine-bag in his lap lay across the top of the bus in front of our seat, leaning back against our legs. He offered the wine skin to Bill and to me, and when I tipped it up to drink he imitated the sound of a klaxon motor-horn so well and so suddenly that I spilled some of the wine, and everybody laughed. He apologized and made me take another drink…”
Chapter 11, The Sun Also Rises
