Viva Espana

The England team is playing the first round of World Cup 2010 qualifying matches. Some are home games (a few tube stops away from us at Wembley Stadium), some obviously, are away games. We went to our first away game--that was technically--away for both teams, but I guess proximity was counting towards the "home" team of Andorra.

Andorra is a tiny little country nestled in between France and Spain, rather than the grandmother character on Bewitched (her name was Endora--for the record).

Anyway, we were in the crowd at the game in the Barcelona Olympic Stadium that was built for the 1992 Summer Olympics hosted in the city. We got to see Joe Cole score two goals in the first 4 minutes of the second half to win the game (finally). Also playing were David Beckham, John Terry and other stars of the game. It was a bit more intimate of a setting than Wembley--it's a much smaller stadium.



England fans (and football [soccer] fans in general) have rightfully earned the hooligan reputation. I've never been around that many bald-headed, snaggle-toothed, multi-tattooed screaming middle-aged men in my life. One of them was so passionate about the poor performance of the team, I was certain that he was going to have a stroke with all the yelling!

After the game, we took in some sights of the city. The fountains near the Olympic Stadium and National Gallery were going with lights and music.



We took a few days off for a mini-holiday around the game weekend. We stayed in a beach resort at the Costa Brava. I can say that it was very much the stereotypical "Brits Abroad" type place--for the Americans, think...spring break in Cancun--for forty-year-olds. So, not a place I need to go back anytime soon, but it sure did make for entertaining people watching and amusement.
To give you a clue, there were two "races" as evening entertainment one night. The first was seeing how many "fags" [cigarettes] the contestants could collect from the other holidaymakers, the second was for the women contestants to collect 8 sets of trousers [pants] from male holidaymakers. Classy.

Here's a shot of the beach.


What can I say? Except, I was warned (thanks, Stef) and...it was a cheap "holiday".