By Jacob Johnston,
Augustana men’s basketball

After a long day of traveling on Friday night, the Augustana men’s basketball team finally set foot in Spain. We spent all Friday night flying over the Atlantic Ocean on our way from Chicago to Madrid. Once we landed in Madrid, we quickly got on another plane to take a short flight to Barcelona.

After arriving in Barcelona we wasted no time and found our tour guide Han who took us to Las Ramblas via bus.

Las Ramblas is arguably the most famous shopping location in all of Catalonia (the state in northeast Spain in which Barcelona resides). This shopping location runs from the center of Barcelona all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. Though this is a great place for tourists to shop, the number one thing on all of our minds was getting food in our respective stomachs.

We split up into smaller groups to look for any restaurant that looked appealing to us and got lunch. This was our first time trying authentic Spanish food, so we tried to get dishes we’d never had before. They ranged from squid, to lamb, to seafood paella (a rice based dish with a variety of different types of seafood). Following our lunches, we walked around Las Ramblas more seeing thousands of people and numerous shops.

After Las Ramblas, it was finally time to check into our hotel located in Castelldefels, which is basically a suburb of Barcelona. We didn’t spend much time at the hotel though, as we had a practice scheduled in the city of Cornella.

This practice was in preparation for tomorrow’s game scheduled for 9:15 a.m. against the European Basketball Academy. The academy is comprised of 19-22 year old players from Spain, Eastern Europe, and the United States. The players in this academy are trying to get professional basketball jobs in Spain, so they will surely be tough competition. It will be an early night for us so we can compete at the highest level in the game tomorrow morning and hopefully come out with a win.

Go Vikes!