10:30 a.m. – Today I checked into my official room at the Maritim next door to the host hotel, Caprici Verd. It’s one of the overflow hotels, and I saw that the Dutch contingent will also be at my hotel as well as India (I think, although I can’t quite understand what the Catalan word was).

Picked up the media kit and am all set. Today will consist of scouting more locations around here to shoot as well as lining whatever up that I can.

After a slow afternoon where all the teams were checking in, the weigh-ins were upon us and it was the first time that everyone came together. It was more than impressive seeing athletes from Iceland, Norway, Lithuania, Poland, South Africa, Japan, Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Italy, Czech Republic, Russia, Brazil and Mexico, just to name a few. There were nine classes for the women and a total of almost 200 athletes total.

After the height check and weigh ins most of the athletes retired for the evening to prepare for the show. This being Europe, one thing you saw a lot of was smoking and everyone was reluctant to let me photograph them while they were enjoying a smoke. Also chatted a bit with John from Flex Europe and Johanna Dejager from Canada who was enjoying some wine and cheese which was her form of contest prep. Johanna looked amazing at weigh-ins and will be competing in the middleweight class, which looks very, very deep.

I also chatted with Jo Stewart from New Zealand and set up a shoot. The New Zealanders, Australians, South Africans all were incredibly nice and I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone from any of those coutries who wasn’t pleasant.

Heidrun Sigurdardóttir – Iceland <-- Oops, that was my internal note to myself to include something about Heidrun as she looked so good at the show and is incredibly memorable and styling.