Speaking
of straitened times, I've been doing some more (unscientific)
research on the shops in Pontevedra. As I suspected, closures within
the indoor galerías
are even more numerous than out on the streets. Tentative conclusions
are that dress and shoe shops have been the worst hit and that most
of the new shops opening up are selling bags, scarves and other
accessories. It's as if someone has identified that the only people
left shopping are wealthy women who haven't got enough bags, etc. and
who can buy their dresses and shoes at the very expensive shops which
haven't closed their doors. For one reason and another, Pontevedra
has quite a few of these. Wealthy women, I mean.
Regular
readers will know I'm quite fond of the Mercadona supermarket chain,
if only because it's nowhere near as bad at customer service as
Carrefour. Anyway, I was shopping there last night when, to my
surprise, I was offered two innovations. The first one, a whole
chicken in pieces, was rather humdrum but the second – fish burgers
– was at least different. I didn't see the third thing the young
woman was holding but it might well have been marinated meat. At this
rate, we might have some Portuguese wine on the shelves before year
end.
En
route to lunch in Vigo with my friends, Anthea and Phil, today I came
upon a car with the name Duster.
I thought it odd to name a car after a cleaning cloth but Anthea
wondered whether it wasn't named after the long jacket/coat favoured
by the protagonists in Spaghetti westerns.
When
my friend, Mike, went back to the UK a week or so ago, he left behind
some breakfast cereal called The
Food Doctor.
I tried it once or twice but decided it wasn't for me. Throwing it out
this evening, I noticed it was actually a porridge and not the muesli
I'd thought it was. Have you ever tried to eat uncooked porridge? I
don't recommend it.
Finally
. . . Here's what's said to be a Beginner's
Guide
to Galicia, and here's an article on the Cies islands I visited last
weekend. Worth reading, if only because they make fewer mistakes than
usual.
And
here are my friend Dwight's own fotos of “The Galician Seychelles”.
Which is a label I've never heard used before. And, having lived there for a
year, I'm not too convinced by the claim. Not that this makes the
place any less pretty.
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