Megan Singleton: BloggerAtLarge.com on Barcelona ahead of the World Cup final

Spain is in the World Cup Final, and excitement is felt across the city. 

Despite not being a football fan, Travel Blogger Megan Singleton felt the buzz ahead of the World Cup final against Argentina. 

She tells Francesca Rudkin about the experience, and how you can take a piece of the Camp Nou pitch home.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News Talks EDB Travel with Wendy Woo tours Where
the World is Yours book.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Now it is time to talk travel and I'm joined
by Meghan Singleton, blogger at large dot com.

Speaker 3 (00:22):
Good morning, Good morning. My brother and his English wife
and girls are staying. Oh my, I wasn't really I
haven't really been engaged in all of this. There has
been a lot of screaming, Yeah, I think there's only
one game to go, am I right if.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
You haven't got the final tomorrow? But oh how wonderful.
I'm so pleased they go on because when it was
Milton England, I was like, oh, we've got this wrapped up,
and then you just watched France come back and I went,
you've got to be joking.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
They're not, and it's a bronze medal game. But anyway,
I've got a bit of a feefa conversation to have
with you today because I thought i'd take us to Barcelona.
So because so Barcelona has actually got eight eight players
from the FC Barcelona playing in the Spanish World Cup,

(01:09):
So there you got and of course.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
The next feed for World Cup is going to be
held in Spain, Portugal and Morocco so well.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
And then that segues very nicely into the fact that
as we speak, I'm putting together a Barcelona, Morocco and
Santorini to it for next year. But that's not even
what I was going to talk to you.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
There we go, tell me about Barcelona. I also had
a good look at Barcelona on the television when I
was watching the beginning of the Tour de France. Of course,
of course the America's Cup. It seems to be quite
a sporting little city, and of course there's the obvious
wonders there for us.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
To yes joy segrata familia. However, they are so over
touristed that they are trying to It's been a decade
long conversation about how to reduce tourist numbers into Barcelona,
because the locals are just losing the whole culture and
losing their ability to even live in the city and

(02:04):
run businesses in the city. It's all souvenirs and tourists
buying tat so they've done a few things. There's taxes
of about ten euros per person per night on hotels
they've put a moratorium on how many hotels can be built,
and the mayor has just announced proposal to eliminate cruise
ships that only stop for one day. So things are changing.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
They're trying to.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
Bring back the heart of who Barcelona or Barcelonians are,
and they want them to really still keep their heritage
and their culture. They're not trying to dissuade tourists, but
they want to promote more business tourism, cultural tourism, and
a little bit of leisure tourism rather than these stay trippers. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

(02:47):
But one of the highlights is a camp New Stadium tour,
which is the home of FC Barcelona, and we did
that a few years ago.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
Now.

Speaker 3 (02:55):
My husband's a die hard rugby man loved the stadium tour.
I mean we actually we just thought how cool would
it be if eaten part with something like this. They
were even selling sods of grass in box frames for
people to buy and take home because they're just retoothed
to the stadium, so you can actually buy a little
piece of FC Barcelona grass. It's so interactive, it's very

(03:16):
very clever, and yeah, I just think it's something people
should add and probably wouldn't think about doing when they
visit Barcelona. Yeah, it's my little FIFA segwe And.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
This weekend they've got a huge outdoor screen near the
stadium to show the final.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
Yes, and it's free, so if people are in Barcelona,
that's all going off. There'll be DJ's music and everything.
I think the game is a bit late there as well,
and I might be right. It kicks off at like
five pm or seven pm local time to them, so
the gates sort of open like late afternoon and it's hot.
It's still really hot over there. But yeah, great, big

(03:51):
open air, free to come and watch the final. How
cool is that?

Speaker 1 (03:56):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (03:56):
And look the two next year sounds absolutely amazing, So
we'll talk about that at another point as well. Thank
you so much, Megan, And of course that fine will
be kicking off here at seven a m. New Zealand time,
It's twelve to Tree.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks a B from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio