In Linares!

?Ǭ°Estamos en Linares! ChessVibes has arrived yesterday, and is getting ready for daily coverage of the second part of the top tournament Morelia/Linares. A small photo report to start with.

First I'd like to thank you for the questions you left under the previous article. Hopefully I will be able to ask some of them to the players. It's been quite a while since that last post was put online, but I couldn't connect to internet at the hotel before this morning.

So, we're "on the road again".

Yesterday morning I left the nice Dutch winter weather, to fly to the Spanish capital with this Iberia jet.

The arrival was at the brand new terminal of the Barajas airport. Those Spaniards have a feel for style, don't they.

The big Madrid train station, Atocha, is more classical but with as much grandeur.

At Atocha you take the train to Jaen, but just before you arrive there, you get out at Linares-Baeza station, some three hours later. It's located a few kilometers outside the city. Well, city, perhaps we should call it a town. The taxi driver thought it wasn't much more than a pueblo.

The players and journalists stay at the Hotel Anibal, where the tournament has always been held. But not this year! For the first time, the games are actually played at another location, which is the Theater Cervantes, named after Spain's most famous writer, who created Don Quichote.

But nonetheless, the hotel has chess all over. It breathes chess, it smells chess, it IS chess. Along the walls you can see portraits of many former participants.

Some of this year's participants, but on photos from the early nineties: Ivanchuk...

...Shirov...

...and Anand.

OK, this one isn't playing this year, but because of the hair I couldn't resist!

The nice bar of the hotel, where a few seconds after I took this photo (around 11.30 AM) Ivanchuk and his second Leon Hoyos entered for a late breakfast. Or was it an early lunch? In any case they shouldn't skip the great Anibal breakfast here, which is of very high quality. This morning I saw Radjabov, Topalov, Cheparinov, Danailov and Henrik Carlsen enjoying the different sorts of fruit, bread and juices. My personal favorite is the Manchego cheese!

Anyway, I said the hotel IS chess. The glass doors that separate the cafe part from the restaurant, have chess boards engraved.

Isn't that stylish?