I am having a hard time describing our arrival in Logrono - like most memorable events, it all happened so fast, and I was extremely confused during 80% of it.

We arrived around 7:30pm at the train station, which was a major construction zone. As we were standing there with all our bags trying to figure out how to get to the middle part of the city, this old man came up to us and started talking in Spanish (which, by the way, is the ONLY language spoken in Logrono. Any assumptions I had made about not being able to use my Spanish here were completely ignorant.)

Since I took 4 years of Spanish in high school, I do pretty well when people speak slowly. But Logrono is not a town that gets a lot of English speakers. People are not used to working with foreigners, and tend to speak fairly quickly, assuming you understand it all. To add another layer of difficulty to this particular conversation, this gentleman was older and couldn't hear half of what I said ANYWAY, so the conversation was extremely difficult on both ends. All I understood was that he was from Logrono, he was at the train station buying tickets for his upcoming vacation, and that he wanted us to follow him to the center of town so we could get to our hostel. Dan - who sometimes has a hard time speaking English - was completely lost, but fortunately was willing follow along.

We walked through all the construction, under this bridge, and into town. The old man kept trying to tell me things that I couldn't understand, and I kept thanking him for his help, unsure if he was planning on walking us to our hostel, or to his house, or to a dark alleyway. I also wondered if he was hoping we would pay him, or if he was just being hospitable.
About halfway into town, we started passing LOTS of drunk people. We passed a group of drunk teenagers, and this girl in a hat ran up to us, asking where we were from in drunken Spanish. I heard the old man tell her that we didn't understand, and she started screaming about getting crazy and partying for "San Mateo!" and trying to get me and Dan to drink with her. We still had all of our bags, and our old man guide, and so we kept walking, unsure of exactly where we were going.

Suddenly we got to this huge square packed with people, where our guide stopped and started talking about a fountain of wine. We weren't sure if he was leaving us at this point, or if we were supposed to wait with him, or what. We stood there for a minute, trying to gather our thoughts, and suddenly this loud parade started coming through the center of the square. It was crazy - like something out of a movie. 15 foot tall people dressed as giant statues walked through, a marching band, dancers, music everywhere. Just this giant Spanish fiesta. A loud bang went off, and the giant fountain in front of us started shooting out a bright red liquid, and next thing we knew everyone around us was cheering, and clapping, and dancing in the streets.

Apparently we had gotten in town just in time to catch the beginning of the Fiesta de San Mateo. Our guide disappeared into the crowd, and after a few minutes we made it to our hostel.