Our first day in Barcelona; the goal (pun intended!): Camp Nou, home field of Barcelona Football Club. (It's the soccer kind of football, not the American kind where you hardly use your foot on the ball...). It was a short ride on the subway before emerging to search for the stadium. We found it without too much trouble, then looked for a café where we could grab a second cup of coffee. We quickly gave up on that, so it was a nice surprise to find a coffee shop inside the gates, near the store. While Anna waited for the coffee (we're in Europe, coffee is not something that comes out of a pot, it's the 5 minute wait while they work the big, honkin', noisy machine!), Kent looked for the tour office. He found a mob, since the gates had just opened at 1000. So, we enjoyed our coffee and let the mob disperse. Kent had downloaded electronic copies of the tickets onto his smartphone, but the gate couldn’t read the QR code nor the barcode. Supposedly the phone screen was too dark for the scanners to read. (As our friend Judy likes to say, "Ah, technologeeee!) Kent had to wait in a line for those who had pre-purchased tickets (versus the line for folks who just showed up) before securing our entrance on the tour.
We walked across a covered bridge to the club’s museum, which is in the stadium itself. The museum started with a detailed timeline showing the club’s history. Timelines were displayed on a table with two sides – each side covered about 10 years with information about the players, championships, and the club itself. It turns out that Barcelona is much more than just a football club – there are basketball, field hockey, handball, and women’s teams along with the football team. All teams have been very successful, winning an average of 3 trophies per season in each sport over the past 5 years (since 2009). The museum was packed as fans of all ages jostled each other to take pictures and selfies with their favorite players or important trophies in the background. There were a couple of areas set aside for Lionel Messi – he had won 4 consecutive Player of the Year awards and is considered one of the top 5 players in the world for the past decade.
After drinking in all that the museum had to offer, we climbed down several flights of stairs to tour the visitor locker room (the great unwashed are NOT allowed in the home locker room!), media center (where they hold post-match press conferences), and, finally, we're walking out to the pitch itself. Ahhhhh! Sacred ground! We almost felt the need to genuflect. The sun had come out and we imagined 100,000 screaming spectators cheering for home team in the glorious confines of the stadium. We strolled along the sideline before climbing up to the press box, where we had a bird’s eye view of the pitch. It sure would be grand to watch a match from there! As We finally left the Barça home field, we discovered we had spent nearly 2 hours on the tour. After exercising extreme restraint in the official club store, we searched for a restaurant to enjoy lunch.
