Barcelona Day 1; #lvsaroundtheworld

Lady Vikings head coach has travelled to Spain and the city of Barcelona through next Wednesday.  Join us for his Barca Daily Journal on his amazing experience.

Well the first day of any international trip can be a bit long.  I have been to England, Wales, Scotland, and Sweden, but never Spain.  All week I thought I would get my flight to JFK or out of JFK cancelled due to the #Blizzardof2015.

So this morning 6:30am came to fast so as I get ready to head out the door to get to the airport 3 hours out for international flights, I realized it was technically NOT an international flight as JFK was the connecting city.

Get to DFW, get checked in, get some food and took off at 10:30am for the first leg of my trip to Barcelona International Airport.  The flight was shorter then I thought due to string tail winds so once we arrived in New York it was 2:00pm and had to wait another 3 and a half hours before we got underway to Barcelona.

Keep in mind this is January 29th at 2:00pm and I have been up since 6:30am so almost 7 hours.

More food at JFK was calling my name forgetting that we will get food twice on the way to Spain.

They started boarding at Gate 6 for Flight #66; kinda worried about that getting on the plain.  The plane was WIDE open which is odd for any international flight, especially out of New York.  I checked the loads and there were 66 seats available in the back (worried about all those 6s again) and 10 seats available up front.  Plenty of room on this flight which was more good news because more extra food for me.

The menu was great except for the nasty dried fruit, blue cheese salad they had for starters.  Beef Filet, and Turkey Cutlet, and some type of fish were the choices.  Beef it was and beef it was twice as they were able to accommodate me with an extra dinner.  The flight attendants were awesome as usual on American Airlines (the only airline to fly by the way).  Done with my 2 dinners with the dessert menu more appealing then anything.

So showing no stopping stuffing my face my answer to the flight attendant after dessert was, "Yes, wake me up for breakfast."

The captain came over the speaker saying we will be an hour early so instead of getting in at 6:30am, we will be getting in at 5:30am Barcelona time.  So less sleep on the plane plus the entertainment centers they give you kept me up, watching Gotham, Brooklyn Nine Nine, and When the Game Stands Tall.  The flight was very bumpy and turbulent on approach so no one was sleeping on that plane.  So 16 hours an counting since the alarm clock going off and landing in Spain.

Customs was easy and the baggage came quick but we were in no rush as we had to wait for 2 other flights to come in before we boarded the bus to head to Camp Nou.

We are finally in route to one of the most famous and historic soccer stadiums in the world and the clock read 9:30am.  So more than 20 hours wide awake.  No way I was taking a nap as watching my bags was my top priority.

We drive through the city around some historic landmarks including the Olympic Stadium, Estadi Olimpic Lluis Companys, home of the 1992 Summer Olympics.

We finally get to Camp Nou and get an amazing behind the scenes tour of a stadium that houses one of the all-time best football clubs in the history of soccer.  This stadium seats about 90,000 and will undergo a $600 million renovation increasing the capacity to 105,000.

This place was massive.  The seats go straight up instead of back so every seat is a good seat, even if you are in the press box, pictured below.  The tunnel going down to the field out from the changing rooms, the trophies, including the Ballon Dor were on display only with the numbers UEFA Champions League trophies.

The Nolan Lady Vikings Soccer pre-game top made its way through the stadium as well.  To see more pictures from #lvsaroundtheworld FOLLOW Us on Instagram or Twitter at @nolansoccer.

Following the behind the scenes Camp Nou Experience we finally made it back across town to the hotel.  It is now 12:15pm Barca time.  Almost 24 hours with no sleep but who wants to sleep.  We check into a pretty nice hotel called Hotel Catalonia... small beds and small showers.  We got to eat some more as lunch in Spain in between 2pm-4pm and dinner is between 9pm-11pm.  They do things a bit different here.

We had to be back on the bus at 2:30pm, actually 2:29pm as they are very strict on timeliness. We were meeting at Juniors FC for an FC Barcelona Video analysis lecture by Hans Schonhofer.  Schonhofer works with FC Barcelona and Bayern Munich running all their analysis.  More note to follow on this lecture as this was some amazing stuff taking video to the next level.

It is now 6:30pm and dinner is back at the hotel at 7:30pm.  So upon arrive back at the hotel, we have been up for almost 32 hours and it is now time to get some rest before the big day tomorrow.

Youth games in the morning, video analysis included, all at the new FC Barcelona Training Complex, Ciuat Esportiva Joan Gamper.