Easter in Spain...

Well it has been a pleasant 4 day weekend here in Spain. It all started with Good Friday and a planned trip to France. Our goal was to drive up the coastline on the winding and turning roads of Coasta Brava and take in the beautiful sunshine. Alex was in the backseat with his nose firmly planted in his Nintendo DS while Carme and I enjoyed the new album from Erykah Badu. 3/4 of the way there, alex started complaining of nausea but could not quite describe it to us but I knew that he inherited the worst part of travelling from his father: Motion sickness. We decided to stop off in Platja DÓro and get some air and see if we could not get him to shake some of his ill feelings. We quickly came across a small arcade complete with bumper cars. alex got a kick out of actually driving one of the cars as we were out for blood in our car, hunting Carme in her own car. Soon we were throwing euros in every machine that had bells and whistles.

Realizing the day was slipping away from us, we retreated back to Tossa to spend some family time at home and watch some movies.

Saturday we decided to head up to Girona to the Girona Cathedral. We walked thru the old part of town as Carme was taken back to her youth and remembering every stree tshe partied on. This usually meant she was intoxicated to some point, but obviously not drunk enough as she remembered detail after detail. I gues s put her thru the same silent torture when we lived in Richmond.

The sky threatened rain all day and it finally kept it´s promise as unbrellas began to opn around us. We made our way back to the underground parking deck just in time to avoid the worst of it. Small bits of hail came down ont he car as we exited the parking garage and made our way to El Corted Ingles, a shopping center reminiscent of Thalhimers or Miller & Rhoades from yesteryear. By the time we made our way to another underground parking deck (there is only one way to go if you add parking and that´s underground), we cought a nice glimpse of the increased hail as it poured down around us. Going outside for a quick look, the streets were completely covered in these pebble sized ice balls. It looked like a bean bag exploded over the whole city. Stil alex was too preoccupied with his Mario game to realize what was going on. Back in tossa, the ground was wet from a light rain but they had not experienced the hail we went thru.

Here are some shots of our journey...

On sunday, we headed to Camp Nou to see Barcelona take on Valladolid in a league match. I bought these tickets months ago and was excited to take in a rare and early afternoon game. Most games are played at 7pm and later up until 10pm. Remember the Spaniard party until late. so it is not an issue for a Sunday night game to last unitl almost midnight. but this rare occasion was a 5pm game.

Let´s explain the point system in soccer. Universallt, a win is 3 points, a tie is 1 point (or considered each team recieving a point is lost) and no points if you lose. Barça have not completely been playing up to thier level all season but still they are in a better position than most. Sadly, Barça were sitting in 2nd place before this game and their arch rivals, Real Madrid, were sitting pretty at the top of the league with only a few games to go in the season. Barça, 7 points behind the league leaders and are threatened by another tough team, Villareal who are 2 points behind Barcelona, were sitting pretty during their game against a weaker team and about to win. the pressure of this game was thick. Real Madrid had a later game but they were playing at home and they are near unbeatable there. Carme is one of their biggest critics and I knew i was about to hear it if they lost or tied against a team that was one of the poorest teams this year.

To not bore you with details, Barcelona did win and decisively. Still Carme was ticked off at the ability of the other team to almost score twice. Still I took some pretty good shots of my fovorite players. take a look...



Monday was spent tooling around Tossa...snapped a few photos, too