Spain Day 1: Barcelona

We arrived in Spain around 10am, and arrived at our hostel shortly after at 11am.  We checked in, dropped our stuff off and quickly went in search of lunch.  We had woken up that morning at 4am, and had only gotten a few hours of sleep so we were really dragging.  After finishing our meal we realized that we were so tired we had hardly spoke.  We went back to the hostel to grab a little sleep so that we could stay up for the big event later that night....the soccer game!

This is a photo I snapped of Matt, this was two seconds after his head the pillow 

After a nap we went out in search of more food.  For dinner we embraced the new culture and Seton and I shared a bunch of tapas. We were eating on a normal schedule, so we were there at 7pm, but in Spanish time that is really early, so we had the place to ourselves. 

Our dinner:

Manchego cheese

Chorizo sausages 

Mushrooms

Ham and Chicken Croquettes 

Potato pancake

While dinner was delicious, and a lot of fun, we were all very excited for what was coming next.  The night before Matt couldn't fall asleep and was looking up times to tour Camp Nou, the FC Barcelona stadium, and found that there was a home cup game being played Thursday night.  We couldn't believe our luck! We quickly grabbed the cheapest seats we could find, and in less than 24 hours we were arriving at the stadium for the game. 

 Matt and Me in front of the stadium 

Inside the stadium

Before going inside Seton found a vendor outside and bought a scarf, it was a fun souvenir but also helped because it was a chilly night

Even though FC Barcelona was significantly better than the team they were playing, Elche, we got to see all the big name stars play! And because they were so much better we saw them all score goals. The final score was 5-0 but they still played Messi, Neymar, and many more that Matt told me about but I have forgotten. 

 FC Barcelona warming up

The game started at 10pm so we didn't get back to our hostel until around 1:30am and decided to go right to bed.  We had a private room in the hostel with Caitlin, Allegra and Anne who returned shortly after us.  They had taken a later flight and didn't arrive until the evening and then had gone to meet up with some of the Holy Cross students studying abroad in Spain.  Even though we were all excited to be in Spain we went to bed early so that we could have a productive day on Friday.