I finally played my first match Thursday night in Barcelona against Carmen Chillida, who played number one for the Spanish Althea Gibson team in Palm Beach Gardens. I had a really good warm-up in the morning for an hour with.Lisa Prechtel. We played on one of the two stadium courts, which is where I’ve been practicing. I won and play a club member, Magda Gual Pascual, who beat the number two seed convincingly last night as well. We play on Saturday.
The whole atmosphere was quite different from that of the morning where there was no one around.
I chatted with the Italians, and watched some of the tennis on the main courts, including the women’s 30 match where an unseeded Chilean player beat the number one seed 6161.
Top right, Daniela Seguel, W40, Chile; middle right, with Michelina Valente; center, at 8pm vs bottom center, at 10am; top left, with Matilde Sole Biosca
Friday morning I practiced again with Lisa for a shorter time since she had a tougher match today ( Scola, Italy); all the kids from the camps this week we’re getting their photo taken; they were really cute. I was ready to leave and then Michelina Valente asked me to hit so we hit for another 40 minutes or so way in the back by the hockey fields.
After practice and lunch, I went to Casa Vicens, the first major project of Antoni Gaudi, built between 1883-1885. The house is in the Garcia area of Barcelona.
The house was built for Manuel Vicens, and was intended to be a summer residence for his family.
The house looks a lot like a Gaudi house, with lots of touches of nature inside, including beautiful ceilings with flowers between the beams, a lovely porch, both downstairs and upstairs, and even Indoor Plumbing which was rare at that time. There was also a lovely roof terrace.
At the time the house was built there were large garden surrounding it with fountains, but most of the land has been sold for housing and the Garden now is pretty small.
He made extensive use of tiles and much of the decoration was inspired by nature.
