Thus it was that I planned a surprise for him and secured tickets to the Camp Nou (at a hefty price) to watch Barça face Getafe. I ran into some setbacks. Firstly, La Liga decided to move the kickoff forward from 7:45 pm to 3:45, a mere 45 minutes after their arrival time. Personally, I had left the marsh too late and some wrong turns onto toll roads got me about 30 minutes behind schedule. It was 3:15 and I was just getting to the airport, but I`d forgotten to check which terminal it was and had no internet. Eventually I`d gotten onto the airport`s wifi, driven to the correct gate, found parking in a giant parking garage, and found their gate. The time was about 3:30. Where were they?
Their flight had been delayed. "Silver lining, at least it's not my fault!" I told myself. I greeted them, said "We need to hurry!" and handed them their tickets on a printed paper. However, my dad did not seem to grasp the gravity of the situation. I think he was in denial about what was actually happening. We ran to the car, stashed their luggage in the boot, then ran some more to find a taxi. "Vamos al Camp Nou!" I directed. "Why are we taking a taxi?" asked my dad. "we won`t find parking at the stadium" I said. He was even more confused. "Dad, were going to see Lionel Messi! Do you understand?!?" The reality finally dawned on him that his dream of many years was coming true minutes after stepping off the plane. He grabbed my shoulders and shook with gleeful violence. Claudia had been in on it the whole time, and managed to do a great job ensuring they had not brought checked baggage and that the reason for that was kept secret. However, our celebration was cut short as I realized to my horror that I didn't have my ticket. How could this have happened? It must have slipped out of my hand as I was shoving the luggage into the boot of the rental. I must say, I was in a state of shock but we instructed the driver to keep going. I`d have to figure something out when we got there.
Fortunately, Barcelona is a very modern city and a gate attendant at the stadium helped me download an app using the stadium`s wifi that allowed me to retrieve an "eticket" on my phone which I could scan to access the game, which all took about 3 minutes. All that panicking for nothing! After alot of money spend and a pretty intense couple of hours, and running halfway around the stadium, we only missed about 25 minutes of match which was not so bad. I kicked myself for panicking as it unlike me, because I know there is a solution to practically every problem. The stress evaporated instantly as we stepped into a full stadium of 90,000 fans. Camp Nou is a quiet stadium, kind of like the Emirates, but has an electric buzz in the air despite the lack of noise. In fact, it was so quiet, it was almost like a library. People were just enjoying the performance. We reveled at the raw skills and speed of Messi and Suarez and the graceful moves of long-legged Yerry Mina as he glided across the pitch. Despite 2 offside goals and an offside breakaway, Suarez failed to score and we ended in a 0-0 draw. Claudia was disappointed that her favourite player and father of her children in an ideal world Gerard Piqué was not on the pitch. Nevertheless, we will never forget this once in a lifetime experience seeing the world's greatest club, even if they were not at their best! Our next challenge: remembering where I parked the car.
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