We R Back

Hiatus deceleration, 3,2,1 you are back in your familiar room...

A family holiday in Salou Spain, one week of overcast weather and one week of traditional Spanish sun, a rather excellent trip staying at the Golden Avenida Park hotel.
Of course what you want to know is if there was any strangeness there and overall what it was all like.

 Heres a potted list of highlights for your delectation.

1. It seems that the Russians and ex Russian states have seriously made their move into tourism.  Where it used to be signs in German and that, most parts have signs in cyrillic script as well as Catalan (Salou is part of the Costa Dorada/ Daurada.).

2.  We saw an Octopus, a real live octopus.  Found by one of the aforementioned Russian chums, hidden under a rock and with the arm it presented I guess its around a good 12 inches.  The guy who found it asked in broken Spanish if it was any good to eat and if it was in any way poisonous.  We made our excuses and left, so we guessed the octopus ended up on his dinner table that night.

3. An old Spanish lady holding her arm out to check her tan against that of an African guy next to her.  In fact this year I've seen more Africans in Spain than at any other time.  Normally resigned to flogging knock off shades and hair braiding, I've seen them diversify into official jobs rather than, so called black market activities.  Incidentally Spain always had a dodgy reputation for racial depictions, Carioca Cafe and Conguitos chocolate peanuts are two of the products that come to mind with dubious depictions of africans.  Whereas by the late 90's we had managed to pension off Robinson from Robinsons Jam, they were still depicting africans as spear wielding natives on conguitos packets. 

4. Central Arcade.  I love an arcade and will do a full  report on what I saw in an upcoming blog, but safe to say that there are a shed load of Pinballs there as well as a wide spec of Naomi Cabs too.  Including Virtua NBA which I didn't know they did (along with Virtuas Striker and Tennis).  Incidentally Time crisis is virtually ubiquitious.

5.  A massive thunderstorm, proving that the rain in Spain is mainly a bastard pain.

Anyway this is just a brief hello, we'll look at other stuff when I have time.