Getting to Camp Nou for our first El Clásico together was supposed to be the easy part.

Milena, Maju and I had our tickets. We knew how we wanted to get to Camp Nou.
We were meeting our friends Claudia and Alexandre outside the stadium before the match.
And, after days of heavy rain in Barcelona had pushed kickoff from 5pm to 7pm, the weather was actually behaving good when we left home.
Everything looked to be on track.
And our plan was simple: Metro to Palau Reial, then walk to Camp Nou.
Easy peasy, right?
But Barcelona had other things in mind.

We started with the L2 and changed to the L3, expecting a straightforward ride across the city.

Then, at Plaça Espanya, everything stopped.

The announcement came that the metro wasn't going any further. 
Suddenly our comfortable journey to the stadium had turned into a small race against the clock.

And we weren't exactly early.

So: Plan B.

We left the metro and joined plenty of other Barça fans trying to solve the same problem: how to go to Camp Nou.

The D20 bus became our new route towards the stadium.

By this point, Claudia and Alexandre were also having trouble getting there. 
The two groups of us were approaching Camp Nou from different directions, sending messages and trying to figure out where everyone was.

Eventually, we got off the bus and started walking.

And walking.

We could see that we were getting close, but arriving near Camp Nou and arriving at the correct entrance to Camp Nou are two very different things.

Time was ticking and when we finally reached the stadium, we stopped at a gate to ask where we were supposed to go.

And then something funny happened.

Standing right there were Claudia and Alexandre.

After all the transport problems and all the messages trying to coordinate, we had somehow found each other completely by chance.

Perfect!

Except… their entrance was right there.

Ours wasn't.

So we had just enough time for a quick hello, an equally quick goodbye.
And then Milena, Maju and I started walking again.

Eventually, we found our entrance.

Getting inside was already a relief.
But we still needed to find our sector and our seats.

And somewhere in the middle of all that rushing came one of my favourite moments of the evening.

This was Maju's first match at Camp Nou.

When she finally saw the pitch, she looked at it and asked:

For a moment, the metro, the bus, the walking and the clock didn't matter anymore.

I'd already been to Camp Nou once before, for Barça against Rayo Vallecano a couple months ago. 
But this time felt completely different because I was sharing it with Milena and Maju.

That's the part I was looking forward to most.

We reached our seats with about five minutes to spare.

Just enough time to settle in before the anthem.

After all the drama getting there, the match itself provided an ountstanding payoff.

One goal.

Then another.

And another.
And then got hard to keep counting.

Barça completely took control of El Clásico, with Claudia Pina scoring four goals on an extraordinary night.

By the final whistle:

Seven.

Nil.

Not bad for Maju's first match at Camp Nou.

We sang the chants, celebrated the goals and got to experience our first Clásico together.
The three of us sitting in our section, while our friends Claudia and Alexandre watched from another part of the stadium.

And in a strange way, all the hassle getting there made the night even more memorable.

Had we simply taken the metro, walked comfortably to our entrance and arrived half an hour early, I'd probably remember the 7–0 only.

Instead, I also remember Plaça Espanya. 
The unexpected bus ride. 
Trying to find the stadium entrance. 
Running into our friends completely by accident. 
Maju seeing the pitch for the first time.

Sometimes the part that goes wrong becomes part of what makes the experience worth remembering.

After the final whistle, we found Claudia and Alexandre again and headed out into Barcelona looking for somewhere to have dinner.

This time, thankfully, there was no kickoff to catch.

Our first El Clásico hadn't gone remotely according to plan.

But we made it.

And Barça gave us seven very good reasons to be glad we did.