Day 7: BARCELONA!

We finally made it! After such a restless night, and tiresome morning, it's amazing we're even alive! We arrived in our Valencian hotel rooms last night at around 3 in the morning. And with only 5 hours of sleep, we marched down the 17 flights of stairs where we were met my Javi and Alex with our beautiful bus.
4 hours of driving later we found ourselves in the cultural Mecca that is Barcelona! After grabbing a quick lunch by the Marina, we proceeded to the most famous street in Barcelona, one the way, visiting a gorgeous cathedral, and the very steps on which Columbus told his news of the "New World." When we reached "La Rambla," we were set loose, free to explore all of the shops that awaited us. While shopping consumed some of the agendas, the rest were filled with animal markets, world famous food markets, and of course, jersey hunting. After our allotted time, we all piled around the towering statue of Christopher Columbus awaiting Kiefer's guidance to our dinner location.
There we were re-united with our friend and owner of Incantato Tours, Sandra. With Sandra in our ranks, we enjoyed an amazing meal of seemingly endless tapas, all of which were mouth-wateringly delicious.
After our briefing for tomorrow concluded, we raced back to the hotel so we could watch the second half of "El Classico," the extremely competitive, and extremely intensive game between two rivals, Futbol Club Barcelona and Real Madrid. This rivalry is so strong and so famous that all of Spain stands still for the ninety minutes in which it takes place, not to mention the clashing of the two best players in the world, each trying to prove their dominance over the other. Much to our own joy, Barcelona and their star, Messi crushed Madrid 2-0. As time expired, the city and the hotel rooms exploded with celebration. "Si! Si! Si! Ganamos a Madrid!" Yes! Yes! Yes! We beat Madrid!
With the city full of life and celebration, the San Marino Chamber Singers are left depleted of any energy and full of sand on their eyes. What an exciting end to an even more exciting day in paradise!

Fun Facts of the day:
Javi and Alex are living legends for switching our luggage between 3 different buses, all in one day. The nude beaches were not as close as we were told. Pans sucks. Giant lollipops are very popular in Spanish culture.