Sunday, April 10, 2005

Fish and Tom Tom

Yesterday was a good day, but I didn't manage to write much because we got back so late. The day started with shopping, Jan's favourite sport. Today was all about shoes and boy, are we in the right town for shoes. Having being pointed in the right direction, the street in question, just off Placa Catalunya, has more shoe shops than you can imagine. We buy shoes.

Lunch is at, what at first glance, looks like a fish shop. You go to the counter, choose your fish and then sit down whilst they cook it for you. Very informal but a great restaurant (sorry didn't pick up a card but can tell you it's on Carrer Commercial quite close to the Thoo), and an enormous meal for 6 comes to about 107 euros. Great value.

Back to the hotel for another ziz before getting a cab for a family cooked meal in another part of town. The driver uses a GPS navigation system to get us to our destination. I've never seen one in action before so I'm fascinated. I speak to him in Italian (I don't speak too much Spanish, except to ask for 2 beers and where's the toilet) but he says that the system is called Tom Tom. He inputs the destination and then, following the map and spoken instructions, he takes us on a circuitous tour of Barcelona. I check, and he states that he has only been taxi driving for one month. I'm sure he didn't tell the machine to take us on the pretty route, but it would be charitable to say that we went a long way round. This man will be very rich, very quickly, as long as he sticks to picking up tourists.

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