Players and others gathered for EPT10 Barcelona have a wealth of options available to them for exploring the historic coastal city, with the friendly EPT Concierge service at the ready to help facilitate such ventures. Such exploration can even extend beyond the coast out into the Mediterranean Sea, as some of us happily discovered this morning.
Chance plays a role in poker. It can matter in poker reporting, too, as your humble scribe was today afforded the opportunity to tag along with Sarah Grant of PokerStars.tv for an enjoyable morning sea voyage.
A short hike down from the casino to the Port OlĂmpic de Barcelona Marina led us to the boarding pier where we met our captain for the day. He soon ushered us into the medium-sized speed boat in which he would pilot us for the next couple of hours.
We set out northward, the shore on our left and traveling along the Costa Brava in the direction of France.
Moving rapidly and bouncing forward, we commented to each other on the buildings dotting the landscape, most modern in style with severe right angles carving variously-sized squares out of the hazy morning sky. Only the Torre Agbar, that tall, striking, cone-shaped skyscraper, interrupted the pattern.
Soon, though, we curved away from the coast to the right to move out to sea. Those buildings swiftly became small, distant boxes as we left behind canoes and sailboats full of fishermen and joined the many larger, commercial vessels motoring about with us.
We continued farther outward, the fog descending from an overcast sky enveloping us as the boat’s wake traced a wide, watery circle. We looked back frequently, searching the receding shore for the casino.
“There’s the fish!” someone called, alluding to the Frank Gehry-designed enormous steel lattice fish that sits atop the Casino Barcelona pointing toward the water and giving us a point of reference throughout our trip.
Soon we were moving in a southerly direction, eventually angling back closer to the coast where are attention was newly claimed by the fin-shaped Hotel W Barcelona near Port Vell and the few enormous cruise ships docked nearby. From there we coasted lazily back to the pier from which we started, and thanking our captain disembarked to return to the casino.
A lovely start to the day, and the perfect way to ease into the business of tracing other clockwise circles around poker tables as the eight 75-minute levels of Day 1B continue to play out. Meanwhile, check out our travels and all of the sights described above in the following video:
Click through to live coverage of the EPT Barcelona Main Event. Check out all the festival results here or take a look at what happened in the EPT Barcelona Super High Roller. Follow the @PokerStarsBlog Twitter account to keep up-to-date with all the EPT action and check out the EPTLive webcast.
Martin Harris is Freelance Contributor to the PokerStars Blog.
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