We decided to leave Barcelona since our site allowed a 3 day stay, and besides which, the forecast was for continued rain. And we did the shopping mall the last day it rained.
A mega shopping mall - "Diagonal Mar", with a hypermarket, useful for fresh underwear when a laundry is not to hand, and with a whole floor dedicated to eating out.
We wandered around comparing menus and country cuisine. The choice was pretty amazing, but in the end the fresh pasta at the Italian place called "Pasta" won the day.
Anyway, I digress, we have left Barcelona and driven south to, somewhere, I think we are near Penîscola, no idea how you say that, but inland.
For a country with no money and high unemployment, Spain knows how to build roads, very good roads. The problem is that they don't bother to tell the people who make maps, or send the software to the people who make satnavs...
So the satnav and I had a falling out today. It started innocuously enough with an exit from a roundabout which had a pile of earth obstructing it. Then it got worse. The only way of communicating this fact to a satnav lady is to press a button marked "detour", and she tries another route.
After going past what I thought were paddy fields, but may have just been flash flooding, we tried to head in the general direction. The situation grew quite comical when the satnav showed me driving through fields, and then zig-zagging through and past canals, when I was actually driving on a very good, although rather new road. It grew tiresome hearing the phrase "turn back when safe to do so" over and over. It gave me a bit of a headache.
The mountains in the distance were covered in snow and the fields were very flooded, so there may have been a good reason for the civil engineers who are still being paid to invest a serious amount of money in building a new road network. But I would have fewer fall outs with my satnav ladies, none of whom knew anything about these roads.
So now we are sitting in the middle of Spain somewhere, we hardly know where, and in a lovely warm restaurant, having a coffee, and enjoying the warmth and the chatter of various languages around us, none English. The views around here are pretty amazing, but you will never know, since you wouldn't be able to find the place either....
Hopefully by tomorrow I shall know where we are!
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