Fireworks and DE-POR-TI-VO

My last full weekend in La Coruña was really nice. We took it pretty easy and stayed in town, but we had a good time. Saturday morning we woke up and ate a good breakfast and headed over to the club for some swimming and tanning. We stayed at the club until our stomachs started growling at about 3:30 - some yummy Doner Kebaps were calling our names! Saturday evening we walked over to the main tapa/bar area of town for some delicious tapas.

After dinner we made our way over to the port area for a fireworks show. Along the way we stumbled upon a fun concert.

The music was very upbeat, kind of like salsa - and everyone was dancing! We found a place to stand and waited for the show to start!

I think the fireworks were supposed to be some sort of battle reenactment or something - I'm not quite sure. I was extremely impressed by the show though - and I've been to the Boston Pops 4th of July!

They had a few types of fireworks that I've never seen before. One of them looked like a dud - but then I realized that fireworks started spraying out of the ocean - out of the water itself! Then, they had these fireworks that just floated around like ghosts! I'm not a good enough writer to possibly explain these…

After the fireworks (at about midnight) we walked through Maria Pita on our way home.

We realized that there was going to be a concert held in the plaza shortly. So, we stuck around for the first few songs. There were dancers, singers, all types of instruments - very exciting stuff. The music had a salsa/mambo feel.

On Sunday we headed over to a nice beach near Juan's office. The beach is huge with great sand and nice waves. However, it was pretty chilly! The air was cold, the water was cold… I was lying in a jacket. We started playing paddle tennis and warmed up pretty quickly. Juan and I broke our personal volley record - making 101 consecutive hits. We waited until about 3:00 (to miss the lunch crowd) and headed up to the restaurant overlooking the beach for some grub. We sat at a table in the sun and waited, waited, waited. I'm not exaggerating when I say that we waited for an HOUR before anyone even came over to our table to get a drink order. The waitress did come over to say that she can only work 3 tables at a time, so to be patient. Ummm, why would you have a 30 table restaurant if the waitress can only work 3 tables?

We were a little frustrated, but so was everyone else at the restaurant. Once you place an order, the food is out within 5 minutes. It was really good food - just typical stuff like tortilla, pimientos, ensalada mixta, and calamares.

On our way back to the apartment we stopped at the stadium to get tickets to the soccer tournament going on that evening/night. There were a few good teams playing, so we thought it would be fun to watch. Plus, La Coruña was in the final - we had to cheer on our home team!

We took the trolley (side note: I've been wanting to take the trolley for a long time!!) from in front of the Domus over to the stadium. We found a little team spirit stand and bought a Deportivo banner - we were ready for the game! We caught the tail end of the 3rd/4th place game : the Club Nacional de Football (yes, "Football") vs. Club Atlético de Madrid.

The final game was Real Club Deportivo de La Coruña vs. A.C Milan. Milan has several very well known players in the soccer world from Italy and Brazil. You might remember some names like Kaka', Cafu, and Gattuso from the world cup games this summer.

Kaka'

The game was a lot of fun. There were several shots on goal and several goals, which make the game more interesting. Deportivo scored first,

so the crowd really got into the game - chanting DE-POR-TI-VO, whistling, clapping, and other loud things.

Here are a few pictures of a Deportivo goal:

Getting ready for the kick... the goalie thinks he's ready.

About to kick!

GOOOOAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLL

Celebration time

Deportivo, the definite underdog, ended up winning 3-1. They were awarded a huge trophy modeled after the Tower of Hercules.

We stayed around for the brief awards ceremony and started filing out of the stadium at 0:00 on the dot.

The moon was really big and pretty over the ocean for our 25 minute walk back to the apartment. If only the trolleys ran until midnight…

Juan had today, Tuesday, off of work. We've been working to get things organized and packed. I leave here on Sunday - only 4 full days left...