Blogger: Lauren Lucy Crowley
They say they best things in life are unplanned… that was certainly the case in our discovery of the Olympic Stadium in Barcelona! We found ourselves at the top of Mont Juic, and had heard about a fountain display nearby… we thought it was best to ask a local how to get there.. seeing as they usually have the best advice! Little did we know what we were getting ourselves in for!
The local man we happen to as was a true gent, although he had very little English, and we had very little Spanish… we became the best of friends! He was out for a run when we approached him… it was a little difficult to give directions with a language barrier… and so he suggested we go running along with him! I thought it was a joke at first… but when a few minutes passed and we found ourselves running down the mountainside without all our recording equipment dangling off us… we realised it wasn’t a joke at all!
In between catching out breath our new friend was full of talk and so helpful showing us all the sights as we passed them by (if only we had understood what he was saying!). Having been running for about 25 minutes down the mountain in the heat… we began to get pretty exhausted. Much to our delight the man stopped infront of a stadium and began to tell us all about it… when we suddenly realised it was the Olympic stadium!! How cool!
Barcelona Olympic Stadium (or known as Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys in Spain), was renovated in 1989 (having been originally built in 1927) to be the main stadium for the 1992 Summer Olympics. It has a capacity of 54,000 and is located in the Anella Olympia, in Montjuic, a large hill to the southwest of the city which overlooks the harbour. It now hosts a variety of sporting championships.. but also hosts a wide range of concerts such as U2 and even one direction!
We saw the Olympic torch, there was a walk of fame with the names of some of the athletes that had competed in 1992… he showed us the Athletics track which we peered in in awe, and best of all.. he brought us right into the Olympic swimming pool! Delighted with life so we were! Felt so honoured to be in a place that so many talented athletes had competed!
We were delighted with life at our discovery, and thanked our new friend profusely for bringing us to the stadium… before setting off to find the fountains! Just goes to show, sometimes life is full of surprises… just go with them!
