Barcelona / Madrid

So I never came back and posted after the game, bust better late than never. Barcelona was great. We spent the first morning on a guided tour seeing the city sites. We saw the old cathedral as well as the Sangra Famillia (the cathedral Gaudi designed). The Gaudi houses were very interesting to see and a stark contrast from the usual type of architecture. I'll just have to upload some pictures later. We made it to the top of Mountjuic to take some scenic pictures of the city. On the way up we passed by the olympic stadium from the 1992 olympics which was a real turning point for the city. We made our way back to the hotel to meet a colleague of Adrian's that lives in Spain for lunch. His name is Jordi and this was the first time we met him, but he treated us out to a great lunch on the Barcelona port. We had calimari, Spanish ham on bread, and fried Spanish peppers( some really hot like the first one I had and most very mild, its kind kind of like playing Roulette you never know how spicy the pepper will be) for appetizers. We followed that up with seafood paella for the main couse and some great desserts. At lunch he gave us the 2 tickets for the FC Barcelona game and told all about the team and what the locals like to call the cathedral in which they play. After lunch we spent the rest of the day walking around the gothic quarter of Barcelona and rested for the game.

We used the subway to go to the game mainly just following the droves of FCB jerseys to the stadium. Here are a couple of things I learned from the game:

1.) FCB is way better than Real Zaragosa. The final score was 4 to 1 in favor of FCB but it might as well have been 20 to 1 the way they dominated the game.

2.) I should have bought a Messi jersey. Before the game I bought a Henry jersey who is their center forward but he didn't convert any of the 4 scoring oportunities that he had. Meanwhile Messi scored the first 2 goals.

3.) You are apparently supposed to to whistle really load when you are mad at the refs.

4.) When you are really mad at the refs you pull out a white hankerchef and wave at them.

5.) They really love their soccer in Spain. Very very few people left early in what many would consider a blowout in soccer terms.

The seats were great and we had a blast and we went to the game by ourselves. Kind of a scary thing to do when you don't know the language very well.

The next day we left for Madrid. Nothing much happened that day as it was a long drive, but we did get to sleep a lot which we really needed since we didn't get back from the game until 1:00 that morning.

Well I have to get ready for dinner so I'll have to finish the update on Madrid later.

Adios!