Although I didn’t cash in the tournament, I thoroughly enjoyed Barcelona. After my elimination, I spent the next seven days touring the city. One night I visited a tapas bar called La Cerveseria Catalunya where a group of friends and I ordered a bunch of crazy small dishes. I had octopus with cayenne pepper and asparagus with sea salt. Weird but good!

 

One of the highlights for me was playing volleyball on the Barcelona beach. Phil Gordon and I went on a mission, first to find a net, and then to actually make it serviceable. The only net we could find was a 24 Euro piece of fishing line that turned out to be better suited to badminton than volleyball. But once we got a functioning net, it was on! Phil and his wife Barb are both really tall so I had my work cut out for me. I really wanted to beat Phil because it’s funny to set a fellow Full Tilt pro on tilt but I have to admit, he beat me two games out of three. By the way, I’m completely attributing the victory to his wife’s skills, not his. Playing volleyball on a beach in Barcelona? It doesn’t get much better than that!

 

I also walked down the extremely crowded Las Ramblas and visited the amazing cathedral La Sagrada Familia. I’d seen this three years ago but it was cool to see the progress they’ve made.

I’d like to publicly thank Lenny, a fan who hooked me up with tickets to see Barcelona’s soccer team utterly dominate on their home field. I had great seats and got to watch Ronaldinho put on a scoring clinic as Barca played their way to a 3-1 win. The stadium was crazy. Over 110,000 people packed this place to watch the game. It took me a little while to realize that when the fans are upset, they whistle, so when everyone’s whistling it’s best not to clap.

 

For possibly the first time ever, I really had enough time to get to know a city. I had fun and can’t wait to come back another day.