Spain, pictures

Barcelona won the Spanish Cup while I was here and I was at the celebrations and the "riot." As the picture indicates flares were going off, fireworks, horns, people yelling, screaming, hanging off of street lights, drinking on monuments and marching through the streets all night long. There were riot police everywhere and finally at 3:20 am I said we should get out of here and back to our hostel as the riot police were marching through the streets with their tear gas canisters in plain view ready to set them off. It was something to see, they sure love their soccer, sorry, football. The night I was flying out of Barcelona they won the league, which was an even bigger deal so that caused the streets to be closed again and taxis were hard to find and then I some how missed the bus to the airport which I was an hour early for. So I ended up paying a small fortune to get to the airport by cab at 4am. Luckly I was safe as it was a sketchy evening to be out, but it was a 6am flight from an airport 100km´s outside of Barcelona, getting the picture of the small fortune paid to get to the airport...

Barcelona was great. Gaudi was an amazing architech and his work in Barcelona is worth checking out. I learned where the phase "that´s so Gaudi" must have come from, but the man was a genious. I am not sure why they don´t use his techniques and ways of building now, oh yes, money and time. Only one of his projects was finished in his lifetime, but his ideas were really cool.

I flew to the west of Spain to Santiago de Compestela and was at mass and the church where all the pilgrams come to. That too was neat to experience. The church was packed and packed with backpacks, hippies, people in hiking and rain gear, not their Sunday best for sure, but I bet they were feeling their Sunday best. Two people at my hostel hiked 700 km´s to get there over 32 days. It was neat to see the pilgrams.

Checked out the beach in Barcelona for a couple of days with Alina from Romania. I could write a book about what we saw those two days at the beach, crazy people and their choices of what to wear or not wear at the beach. There was this one women on Friday afternoon who showed up in her work cloths and this is me saying what I think is going on in her head. "I worked hard today. I think I will go to the beach on my way home. What undergarments did I wear today? Oh it doesn´t matter." So she strips down to her thong see through lace underwear, no bra and proceeds to lay on the beach and get a message from one of the ladies offering this 5 Euro service on the beach. All day we heard "Coka, Fanta, Cerveza, massagi." I did get the 5 Euro massage on the beach and it was good, bathing suit stayed on for those wondering.

Click on the following link for pictures from Barcelona and Santiago de Compestela Spain

Off to Turkey tomorrow.