Many apologies to the legions of Oz Griswold Blogger
followers (all 2 of you…) for what is now a 1 month delay between the date of this posting
and the first of the photos in this posting. As mentioned previously, I will
continue to endeavor to try to keep the blog more up-to-date, but it is difficult, primarily because of my lack of discipline…
At the time of this posting, we have just arrived in Greece after 2 amazing months in Spain. This posting is dedicated to our sojourn to the northeastern sector of Spain. The main 'reason' for an excursion to this region you may ask? A 7 year old boy's fascination (bordering on obsession!) with arguably the past decade's most amazing sporting professional club, FC Barcelona.
13 August: Well our time in Pampa came to an end, and after some goodbyes to several neighbors and a host of domesticated animals we made off for Barcelona. We broke up the trip by stopping in Valencia. A beautiful city where our late afternoon arrival allowed sufficient time to check out the ciudad's 'el centro antiguo'. Firstly, a picture of the Griswold's in front of the enormous Estadio de Toros in Valencia. We didn't watch any bullfights though the kids were very curious about the tradition.
The city had a good night life feel, clearly Robsie and I couldn't sample it properly because of our uh, youngish companions. Perhaps next time...
14 August: During the evening of the 13th after the kids went to sleep, Robsie and I were perusing a coffee table book of Valencia in the hotel apartment, and became aware of an amazing district that we had to check out prior to leaving this city. The old river that used to go through the centre of town has been diverted (presumably because of flooding issues). A large urban park has been created along the old river bed and accompanying floodplain that is dotted with an amazing suite of buildings that include an aquarium, museum, concert hall and a myriad of other civic functions. Here is a sampling of the buildings we meandered around in this former Valencian riverbed prior to departing for our primary destination of Barcelona.
15 August: We arrived in Barcelona on the 14th to a great flat in the barrio of Poble Sec. Poble Sec is one of the 'happening' areas in Barca, known for culinary (about 1 new restaurant per week), multi-cultural-ness, but out of the tourist scene (which can be overwhelming in Barca) aspects.
Firstly, we loved the metro as generally it seemed we could get anywhere within about 200 m from a metro station...
Of course, the first obligatory stop was the outlandish (for a cathedral that is) Gaudi designed Sagrada Familia. We opted out of the tour as we did not come prepared with internet tickets in hand, and the line was about half a km long. Let's go eat lunch instead...
Next obligatory Gaudi stop... Yep, Parc Guell! Well its on the elevated end of town, given our experience (and fitness) from our recent Pampa days, we were expecting a challenging hike. But alas the Barca city planners (and implementers) devised a cascade of upwards escalators to assist the city slickers (and somewhat chunky tourists) to attain the heady heights of the park.
Here are the kids in a weird architectural cusp in the Gaudi cavey thingy me-bob...
And the kids on the weird Gaudi lizard fountain thingy me-bob (took a bit of effort to fling off all the tourists for this pic BTW!).
16 August: So Robsie ordered online tickets for the opening match of FC Barcelona whilst we were in Pampa, and we had instructed for them to be couriered to our temporary flat address in Poble Sec. Well the tickets got there on Thursday while we were in Valencia in transit to Barca! So during the ensuing phone conversation I had (from a hotel room in Valencia) with the courier bloke-man-dude (at the Poble Sec [Barca] flat address), I thought the arrangement was for the tickets to be re-dropped off on 15 August (the next day) at the Barca flat (when we would be there). Unfortunately, the courier misunderstood 16 August (mis-communicado, capiche), so we (especially Sammy) were quite relieved once we had the tickets in hand.
We were unshackled from our premises with the arrival of the FC Barca tickets, so off to check out more Barca sites. First taking the teleferico (cable car) to Montjuic, and wandering around the castle up on top of this elevated coastal position of Barca.
An example (of a plethora) of weird sculptures found all throughout Barcelona that for our purposes also served as a sort of distributed playground around the city for the kids (probably not what the art-eests had in mind!).
The girls bought a couple of flamenco dresses and proceeded to gallivant around town with their newly acquired wares. Many a look from the local Catalans of the girls with their Andalucian threads! Their dresses were sufficiently demure to allow them to enter the traditional old cathedral (not the Sagrada Familia, but the gothic-y one in the old section of town), but Robsie could NOT as her shorts were to short and here shoulders were bare (note this wasn't an issue at the other cathedral we visited in Leon a couple of weeks later).
17 August: So it was time to take a break from the city life and check out Costa Brava northeast of Barca. We chose a small beach called AguaBlava purported to be beautiful with forest to the water's edge. It was beautiful indeed, but weekend crowds (many French due to proximity with border) put our recently developed skills to acquire several square metres at the water's edge in such crowded circumstances to the test. Here's a pic of the kids messing around some large rocks near the beach (in the background), and the kids entering aqua blue 10+ m depth water as they exit the slide from one of the peddle-o-thingy's you rent for an hour or so with a slide...
18 August: Well it's FCB-day today (FC Barcelona's opening La Liga game to try to win a 4th La Liga over the past 5 seasons), and before heading off to the game we need to fill up with a good meal at a Poble Sec 'placa' (catalon for plaza). Found a nice cozy place and the food presentation was nice. Afterwards a pic of the crew walking back towards the flat on the pedestrian only street in which it is located (BTW this is shoulder to shoulder with people EVERY evening, great vibe). The 3rd photo is our flat (1st floor above ground level) with a café/bar below. In addition to being rather spacious, this flat also had a rather largish courtyard, both features rare in central Barca.
Here are 2 of the 3 kids dressed up with appropriate gear for the FCB game. Sam has on the home game uniform and Frankie has last year's away game uniform. We got an early start (3 hours before game) to avoid crowd's on the metro and getting into the stadium. This was a good strategy for catching the metro.
The FC Barcelona grounds, Estadio Camp Nou, is holy ground to legions of soccer fans around the world. It is purported to be the largest capacity soccer stadium in Europe. At full capacity it is just a few hundred people shy of 100,000. Here are the kids emulating a kick of one of the numerous sculptures of past champions that ring the stadium.
We're in Camp Nou now, early and prior to the crowds.
We didn't have the best tickets in the stadium, namely the highest row in the whole stadium. However, it turned out to be a very good thing, as the assortment of safety bars and the final walking lane behind the last row provided ample entertainment possibilities for Francesca and Luca after they lost interest in the game after about 5 minutes from the start. Also the views of the city were spectacular from this elevated vantage point.
Sammy and I unveiling the FC Barcelona flag to demonstrate our support for the home side.
The 'great one' about to take a corner kick. Messi scored two goals in the opening game and is once again on top of the La Liga goal kicker list. Sammy, Robsie and I were completely amazed by the athleticism and skills of all the players on the FC Barcelona side. I have never seen such display of sheer unadulterated sporting athleticism and skill in a live setting. This comment that I made to many a Spaniard generally garnered a reply of the following ilk:
"What do you expect with the amount of $$ FCB spend on their team?"
Fair point...
FCB thrashed their opening La Liga season opponents 7-0, we didn't mine though, lots of classy goals were scored.
BTW, the biggest soccer money deal ever was completed during our time in Spain. Real Madrid acquired Welsh winger Gareth Bale from Tottenham for an unprecedented $136 million AUD over 6-years. Many a question has been raised, given the, ur, uh, rather poor state of the economy in Spain specifically, and Europe generally, with this sort of money flowing around in let's be candid, not core human necessity functions...
Robsie and Sammy estimated that at kick-off there were probably about 60,000 people for the opening game against a pretty weak side (Levante, the weakest of the two Valencian team's currently in the Primera League).
Proof that Robise was at the game.
After the game the metro was chockers, so we found a place to have a bite and a drink. It also had a fantastic glass roof over a bar sort of thing, which also served as a good kip (nap) location as Luca is illustrating. Finally got back to the flat after a fantastic professional sporting experience.
19 August: Easy day today with the plan simply to enjoy the market in Barca. Another weird Barca sculpture on the way to the market.
The market had an myriad of foods such as seafood...
Fruit and fruit drinks...
Smelly bacalao...
Choice take-away paper cones of jamon... All in all a great time at the market and generally in Barca to wind up our stay.
20 August: Departure from Barca day. Kids having a bit of a kick on the street in front of the flat waiting for me to try to navigate the car to pick up all the gear.
We did a marathon trip from Barcelona to Granada on this day (~1000 km). Luca had the right idea to shorten the trip, unfortunately for Robsie and me, her two siblings did not follow suit.
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