City Boy

 

TigerBlog has never been a city guy. 

He's always preferred a beach, or a river, or a big park. Cities are usually too dirty and too busy. 

There are exceptions, of course. To that list, he can now add Barcelona.

TB had never been to the Spanish city prior to last week's trip with the men's lacrosse team. The group started in Andorra, which he never knew was an independent nation (and has been since 1278). 

Now Andorra, that's TB's kind of place, with its mountains, lakes, streams, views and best of all, lack of crowds. TB probably walked a total of 20 miles or so in the four days that he was there, most of that uphill or downhill.

It was a week ago today that the team left for Barcelona. TB was apprehensive at first, since it's of course a huge city, one with a population of nearly two million. Would he like it there? 

The answer was a most decisive yes. In fact, it's vaulted to the top of his list of favorite cities, along with Dublin, which he went to on the men's lacrosse team's 2008 trip there.

Where to start to talk about Barcelona? 

The food was tremendous. The architecture is tremendous. You can walk down La Rambla, which is a center of culture, commerce and cuisine. You can walk through the 1992 Olympic venues. There are beaches. There are cathedrals. There's something for everyone.

One of the city's biggest attractions is the Sagrada Familia, a still-unfinished church that is the work of famed architect Antoni Gaudi. The team toured the cathedral and was overwhelmed by it.

There was also the bike tour of the city. The team was divided into three groups, and TB's group went off with a guide named Alvaro Garcia. And where is Alvaro from? Dallas. The one in Texas.

Alvaro moved to Spain with his wife and two children six years ago. He was running a travel business prior to Covid, and he's working toward doing virtual tours of cities around the world. He also runs these bike tours, beginning in the old city.

He took the group on about a six-mile loop. Along the way, there was a church that used headstones of Jewish dead as part of its building materials, courtesy of the Spanish Inquisition. You can still see the Hebrew names on the side of the church to this day.

There was another church that also had something visible on it. This time, it was a huge ad for Samsung. It's caused quite a stir in the city about its appropriateness, as it is helping to raise money to rebuild the building. 

Through the ride, Alvaro was the perfect guide. He spoke about the sites and their histories, but he didn't overdo it. He was engaging and funny. The ride was great.

At one point, the ride took everyone through a park that had a plaque for every gold medalist in the 1992 Summer Games. Alvaro asked the group to find the plaque for the Dream Team. TigerBlog added that Princeton had a gold medalist in 1992, swimmer Nelson Diebel, and that would be a good one to find as well.

That was easy. 

The team also made a stop at a school and spent two hours with a bunch of kids who had never seen lacrosse before. The players showed them the basics, worked with them, signed a bunch of autographs and answered a million questions. It was tremendous to watch how much everyone enjoyed it, players and children.

There was also the trip to Camp Nou, the home of the Barcelona soccer team. Princeton attended the game last Thursday and saw Robert Levandowski score twice in the first half as Barca rolled over Villarreal 3-0. 

The stadium seats 99,354, which makes it the largest soccer stadium in Europe. Barcelona's crowd is electric for the entire game, with flags, singing, a banging drum, chants and everything you'd expect from an event like this. 

It was a staggering scene, both before the game, as nearly 100,000 descended on the area around the stadium. Included in that was a rather interesting choice for the soup of the day:

It was craziness. For someone who has spent his life going to games, this one was something special.

Lastly, there was a park where the team practiced and played, and behind it was a beach and the Mediterranean Sea. It was a hot afternoon, with temps in the low 80s. When the lacrosse piece was over, the entire team went around to the other side of the fence, down to the beach and jumped in.

They splashed around, dove in and out and generally had an incredible 45 minutes or so. TB didn't jump in. He just watched. 

He's been fortunate now to go on four of these trips, and he's pretty sure that nobody who has been on any of them will ever forget them. What stands out the most and for the longest will be the moments like the one in the sea, where it was just a bunch of teammates who were thrilled to be together in someplace new, someplace amazing. 

Barcelona is such a place.