Barcelona Beaches, Spanish Victory

Sunday morning, we had plans to wake up to watch the sunrise over the Mediterranean. Unfortunately we had no idea when the sun was supposed to come up, so our 6:00 alarm was rendered completely useless when we awoke to see daylight peering in through the window curtains of our hostel room. We promptly went back to sleep and awoke at a more reasonable time.
When we did finally get up, we headed downstairs to the lobby for another nice complimentary breakfast. I had a mixture of corn flakes and cocoa pebbles and a glass of zumo de naranja (O.J.).
After breakfast, we got our stuff together quickly to check out, and put our swim suits on, poised for a sweet day of catching rays and swimming in the sea.
The girls decided to go do their own thing, so it was just Los Tres Toros at the beach. Other than acquiring a minor abrasion on the bottom of my foot from a jagged rock on the sea floor, the day was pretty solid. We did some laps, did some people watching from the water, shared some stories, and laid out on the beach for a little while to get some color.
After that, we headed back to the hostel lobby where most of our belongings were. There we changed into our street clothes, brushed our teeth, and went out on another excursion. This time to find a Barcelona Harley Davidson t-shirt for Nate’s mother. A metro ride and a mile and a half walk later, we arrived at a very desolate, very closed Harley Davidson storefront. Nate was defeated, but he seemed to have the right idea very soon after; though it was kind of a waste of time to walk all the way over there, we still got to see a part of Barcelona that we wouldn’t have otherwise seen. Jesse Eisenberg’s rule number 32 from the movie Zombieland: Enjoy the little things.
Upon returning to the Hostel, we met up with the girls. We told them that we were famished, so we set out to find some food. Our futile search for an open restaurant found us back at telepizza where we found ourselves too impatient to wait for the pizza to cool down. I mused that our feeding frenzy must’ve resembled something out of an episode of Jackass.
After dinner, we picked up our bags and returned to Arc de Triomphe station to hopefully watch the better part of the World Cup Finale between the Spanish and the Dutch before we had to get on our bus. We were able to do just that, but, unfortunately the game was so evenly matched that the score was tied 0-0 at the end of regulation, and our 10:15 bus was leaving the station before the first 15 minute overtime period started, so we were understandably unsettled as we boarded our bus.
By the way, interesting game, right? I have to provide a little bit of my own analysis because I want to know if anyone else was thinking what I was thinking. First of all, I’m a huge Chicago sports fan, and I have been following the “courting of the king” for the past week. I know that I’m not the first one to say this, but I just need to get it out; I can guarantee that the only people in America that were happy with the epic signing of Chris Bosh and Lebron James to the Miami Heat were a collective group of fair-weather, rich snobs from South Beach. This move did nothing for anybody, but make the rich (athletes) richer and leave a city like Cleveland scratching its head wondering what they did to deserve their rare history of sucking miserably at sports.
With that being said, I wanted to establish that Spain was not only the favorites to win based on pure skill, but they were the sentimental favorites, and if they had lost it would be reminiscent to the Miami Heat situation. The only people that would’ve been happy with a Holland victory would have been people in Holland. The world was ready for a Spanish victory. We just had to wait 116 minutes for Andres Iniesta to draw first and only blood. I had found a plug-in on the bus seat in front of me to listen the game on the radio. The broadcast was in rapid-fire Español, which is getting easier and easier for me understand, especially since I knew every player’s name, and the emotion of the announcers was apparent. When Iniesta put the winning goal into the net, the bus went crazy. Thereafter, I had a nice text convo (sorry Mom and Dad) with my sister about the game, Barcelona, and the delicious sounding tapas and croquetas that her and Dave were planning on having that evening.
The bus ride back was a lot better than the one that we took to Barcelona. There was a lot more room between each seat, and our friend Savannah was all by her lonesome in front of us, so there wasn’t anyone to recline their chair into my lap this time. Needless to say, I slept quite soundly, and before I knew it, we were back in Madrid ready to get on yet another bus to return to Segovia. As we sifted through the Madrid transit system, we ran into several pockets of sobered yet somewhat still enthusiastic red and yellow clad youths that were still out celebrating last night’s victory.
When we returned to Segovia, Alejandro went to class, and Nate and I returned to La Casa where we found that Maricarmen was not there, so Nate made some tea and I took that opportunity to take another quick nap.
We then proceeded to walk to class, where I’m starting to get the even-flow of the material and acquiring comfort.
After class, we had a much-needed almuerzo followed by an even more necessary siesta (that lasted 3 hours). By the time we had woken up it was almost dinnertime, so we did some of our tarea, and then ate. After dinner, we watched another segment of the Tenth kingdom, and now were blogging and getting ready to wake up nice and early again tomorrow. We’re taking a bus to Ávila and Salamanca. I’m pretty pumped about the former, and very excited about the latter. Hope that everything is fantastic at home. Miss you all. ¡Hasta luego!