Back to Barcelona. We were supposed to spend some time in the South of France but Narbonne was a dissapointment and we were getting tired. We took the next high speed train out of there and returned to Barcelona for the remainder of the trip. A taxi driver at the train station found us good accomodation which was an apartment with cooking facilities, plates. Food in tourist restaurants can be kind of expensive but we were pleasantly surprised at the quality and prices of the food in supermarkets, one of which was just around the corner. For the next three days we ate lightly, mostly sandwiches etc prepared in our room and taken along on excursions. It cut the cost of eating about 90%.

Our hotel was around the corner from the Barcelona Football Club. We took the tour. It set up a very good emotional response for our last day. It went like this: Football (soccer for the Northamericanos) is the most popular sport in the world. Barcelona has one of the best teams in the world. People come from all over to take the tour. They are like pilgrims who are guided through the Vatican museum. Everyone seemed looking for a chance to see Messi or touch the grass on the pitch, walk through the broadcast booth, dressing rooms and most of all the museum with over a hundred years of silver cups, old boots and dusty soccer balls. There is subtle but stirring music playing everywhere, in the broadcast booth an continuous loop of Messi's first GOOOOOOOAAAALLLLL!!!!!, a TV commercial with two little old ladies sitting outside their home when a flower pot suddenly falls from an upper balcony towards them. They are miraculously saved by a football star who knocks the flower pot away with his head. All wonderfully filmed with stirring music designed for an emotional response. It was worth the tour as you left feeling somehow uplifted.

With that feeling in our hearts we headed down to the Plaza Espanya for our last evening to see the Miro park and what was done to the former bullfighting arena which was turned into a very nice shopping mall complete with a Cinema 12 showing the latest movies. We were directed by a nice family to the magic fountain which puts on a lovely display on weekends. While we waited on the steps it became apparent to me that there was a mystic energy. In the distance the Family Sagrado church lined up with the bullfighting arena, then the great obelisks, then a river from the fountain, the fountain itself and behind us up the stairs more obelisks and finally grand government buildings. There was an obvious lay line planning and phalic symbolism at work. I got a strange but not unpleasant feeling of mystic energy.

So while we waited for the show people started coming. Many people. It was like the football stadium but while at the football stadium it seemed that the people were tourists from all over the world where soccer is loved, here at the fountain it seemed to this observer there was a disproportionate percentage of ex-patriot Spaniards. There were people from Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, Mexico, my Dominicana and many others. By the time the show started I estimate thousands were there. All of the dozens of countries Spain sent her people to for the last 500 years were coming back as though called. The water show was wonderful. It was as though in that magic place Spain was calling back its children. The energy was palpable. One day I must return.

This Saint is featured in Barcelona - She protects the team apparently

Wow the field is Big!