2013 Barça La Liga Champions Parade

This year hasn't been a particularly good one for Barça. They recently got their asses handed to them by lost to Munich dropping them from Champions' League competition. But it hasn't all been doom and gloom over at Camp Nou. Barça still managed to win (at least) one championship trophy, in this case in La Liga competition. La Liga is Spain's top soccer league, comparable to the NBA or other national sports league in the United States. To celebrate the victory, Barcelona held a parade last week.

The parade route near Carrer de Arago and La Rambla Catalunya:

Diana and I walked down to the parade route with Gema's dog Linda and met up with Pau and his cousin. It was kinda fun to be out with everyone waiting for the team bus to pass by. I spotted Barça's number one fan while we were waiting:

We only had to wait about 20 minutes or so for the bus to go by. It's funny but, as it approached, the bus seemed to be going verrrrry slowly but when I tried to take photos, it seems to have sped up to light speed or something. Oh, and folks waving their damn flags caused some problems too! La Liga trophy and Shakira's husband:

I only really got two half-way decent photos of the team while they passed by. In this one, Messi was kind enough to stand just above his large photo so he could be more easily identified:

I think the highlight of the parade is when a woman was walking by with a hand full of Barça flags and Diana asked her where she got them. She responded something like they were giving them out and then she handed us one. Woohoo! My first Barça-branded item! Pau and I representin':

And how could I not post a photo of Diana and I with lovely Linda? She's (Linda) is a bit of a scaredy cat dog so getting her to pose with us was somewhat of a challenge.

On a side note...I've never been much of a fan of pro sports but it's relatively easy to get sucked in to being a Barça fan as pretty much everyone and their mom's one. Anyway...I'd like to wish Barça better luck next year. You won't be able to keep up your reputation if you're only bringing home one championship per year!