Today is all about tonight........Go Spain!

This is a huge night in Barcelona………Spain is playing Italy for the European Soccer Championship.  This game is about as big here as the Super Bowl is in the States.  Everything about today has been preparation for tonight.  The game doesn’t start until 8:45pm but the bars have been busy all day and I have no idea what I’ll have to do to get a good seat tonight. This is one of those times when it pays to a single and additionally a 'single woman in a sports bar in a foreign country'.  I plan to have dinner at Schilling’s and then head a short distance down the street to Molly’s Fair City Irish Pub.  This pub will definitely be the place to be for this game in Barcelona.  It’s one of the few places with lots of TV screens and a bar staff that knows how to run them.  I can hardly wait to see Mario Balotelli in action again…….there’s no way I’d miss this one!

Once before I was in Ireland when they were playing in the World Soccer Championships and that is an experience I have never forgotten.  We arrived in Dublin just as the game was starting and drove straight to the first bar we could find.  It was mid-day and the entire city of Dublin was ‘closed’.  All the shop people, businessmen, even doctors and nurses were in the pubs to watch the game.  Ireland lost that game and it ended their first run at the championship in many years but it is still one of my more meaningful memories of the trip.  The manager of the bar we were in gave me an Irish flag with the Championship information on it and I fly it proudly every St Patrick’s Day!

I’ve been watching the play-off games at Molly’s off and on for the last week so I have a bit of an edge with the bartenders since if they see you more than three times you move from tourist to local status and it pays off immensely in getting served during crunch times.  A few days ago I also casually meet the young Irish owner so my status there is about as good as it can be for the short time I’ve been in town.  

I even took a short nap today which is something I never do but………if Spain wins I will clearly want to be part of the celebration and I suspect the celebrating will go on very loudly for a very long time into the night, or should I say morning.  You know the old saying, you can’t fight ‘em  so join ‘em!  

Is this one hell of a refrigerater or what......if I could just get it home!