It all works out for the best,

Thank God it does. Who knew?
We had no idea what we missed till after the fact when we saw it on the news.
Barcelona beat Spain in Saturday soccer game.
Barcelona went nuts and the area we are moving to today as well as all of Barcelona except where we were had such a celebration that 60 some (almost 70) people arrested and almost as many ended up in hospitals.
We got off the metro Sat probably while the game was still going on and wondered where everyone was. We figured maybe we were here at the peak of off season.
Got to our hotel after walking, eating and walking some more.
The next day heard it on the news.
Great thing about a nice hotel is there are two stations on tv in english. they are both news stations and that is perfect for me.
Till we arrived at this hotel we did not have any english tv or any tv period.

Talking about soccer. We walked along a good portion of the Barcelona beach yesterday and came upon a area where they play beach volly ball. However it is really soccer beach volly ball.
I took a tiny bit of video with my camera to show Dylan when I get home.
They use a soccer ball, vollyball net and do not use hands at all.

As Liz mentioed in her blog. We have to say it.
The food here is just not that good.
It is either too oily,greasy, or some form of potatoe. (except spanish omelet is great and looks more like it is oven baked)
Yesterday I odered grilled prawns thinking that would not be floating in oil. Wrong.
they managed to put a platter of oily prawns in front of me.
I think they soak it is oil before and after grilling them.
We ordered a tapa(starter) of boiled shrimp and that was not oily but tasted like they boiled it in ocean salt water.
Liz order something I took a picture of on the menu.
A baked potatoe standing tall on a plate split at the top with a thousand island color sour cream texture sauce and shrimp in the top of the potatoe.
We are looking forward to Italy for food.

Spain has some wonderful things however. In Madrid and Sevilla the building are all like old spanish building. I think they recycle the stone, brick and plaster to make new buildings as not much looks modern and new except a small area in Madrid.
Sivella is really old Spanish style every where and you wonder if they built anything from new material in the last 200 years.
Barcelona has lots of new looking areas and buildings but still has its origional areas that are typical old Spanish style.
The hotels and hostels use a interesting system to conserve energy.
The door key has to be in a slot at the entrance of the room for the lights to be on.
If you leave the room and take your key the lights will not turn on or stay on.
The only time that is a problem is when (like in our hostel) you had to put all your stuff in a locker in your room which uses your key to open.
for security because it was 6 people to a room.
If you took your key out to open your locker the lights went out. I was in the room alone after dark and had to open my locker. I am happy to say I brought a very small flash light with me and made sure I had access to that all the time.
We are relocting to another hotel in Barcelona today and have 1 1/2 days left here.
When we changed from hostels to hotels we got this hotel for a great price. Around $100.00 per night.
The night train to Italy does not leave today so we needed another night here.
To get this hotel for another night was well over $300.00 per night. We found a better hotel just down the road for $88.00 (that is euros not dollars).
For $500.00 dollars I got $360.00 euro so figure the hotel would be about $500.00 in dollars.
All we do is walk so what is a walk just down the road to up grade to a hotel in a more interesting area. Both hotels are nice. Just the internet price is better and this hotel was no longer available at internet price even on line.

I am going to stop second guessing Liz when I am not home because now I see how it goes.
We tried to book the night train before making hotel reservations but the train station in Madrid did not do the international train reservations (because it was a city holiday?)
. However we tried like three times to get that done and for one reason or another they could not do it.
We walked and took metro to the train stations to take care of it in advance and was not able to till we got to Barcelonia.
If I had been at home I would have wondered why she did not take care of that earlier.
Lets just say things do not work her like they do at home.
They should have train reservations on line but they do not. You have to go to the train station.
No matter about that the train and metro are still a great way to go.

We are off to a Barcelona adventure.
I watched a special on the plane to europe on Barcelona chocolate cafe´s.
hopefully I will have something to report on that next time.

Ta Ta