San Fermín (Running of the Bulls)

At noon on 6 July, a rocket shoots into the sky from the balcony of Pamplona's town hall, and tens of thousands of people in white with red scarves spray champagne and shout Viva San Fermín! For the next nine days this small northern Spanish city never sleeps: running with bulls at dawn, watching giant-puppet parades by day, and dancing in the streets at midnight. Hemingway wrote about it, but only by pushing into the crowd do you understand true fervour.