This morning, the pigeons have been silenced, the weather's turned, the wind has come up over night and the temperature has plumetted to 26 degrees. Down at the beach nobody is going near the beach as it has turned into a vicious dumping surf that rolls big waves up to about 8 feet that only break when they hit the shore – bone breaking stuff. A few people who know what they're doing are out windsurfing and kitesurfing and look like they're having an absolute blast.
Anne and I headed inland today to the small town of Tempio Pausania. We had great fun when we arrived there, as we followed the signed to the Centro, expecting to find a car park somewhere along the way, but instead in one turn we went from a normal two lane asphalted road to a narrow, winding, cobble-stoned pedestrian infested maze that we had to negotiate our way through. Some of the turns were so tight, that I had to take a couple of bites at it to get the car round. The fact that the inside corner had very menacing looking iron protectors put on them, so that the cars wouldn't damage the stone work made the task all the more hair raising. The total journey would probably only have been half a kilometre, but with a turn every 50 metres and pedestrians everywhere (the concept of a footpath hadn't been invented when this town was built) it was quite a nerve racking experience. The one thing we didn't come across was anywhere to park, so we had to head to the outskirts of town to find somewhere to park and then write down where we were incase we got lost in the maze that is Tempio Pausania.
We went for a walk around the town and stopped at the Tourist Information Centre, to understand where we'd parked the car. There was an english woman in the queue and she was wanting to know where the shops were. The man behind the counter was explaining this to her (Tempio is a small town remember), when she said “and are these large shops”.....”mmmm, not so big” was his reply. Ah, it's a historic town, with a big church and lots of interesting streets and piazzas and other things to look out for – shops – go to Rome.
We've come across a trend in Sardinia – interesting little towns, with no where to eat. After yesterday's less than brilliant lunch we were in no mood to chance it, but Tempio had absolutely nothing that even tempted us, which was a shame as it really is a lovely little town.
We are checking out of the campground tomorrow morning, which meant that we had to pay up this afternoon. The campground appears to have had it's processes designed by the accounting department of the local university, because although they are effective in delivering some form of control, they get a big fat zero for their customer friendliness. When you order a coffee, rather than the person on the till writing your order on a post-it note and sticking it on the coffee machine for the Barista to make, here you are handed a ticker tape of your order which you have to give to the Barista. One morning Anne was the only person there and the cash register driver and the Barista were standing talking to each other while Anne was giving her order and paying for it. When she had finished she went and sat down. “Scoozi, Signora.... where is your ticket”. “What, you were standing there when I ordered – it's two capaccino's, how hard can it be to just make the coffee” is what we thought..... “oooh, sorry, here it is” is what we said of course – too polite some times.
Anyway, I digress.... Checking out.... At 4pm, the day before we checked out, we had to pay up. Now when you check in they always take your passport as a guarantee. When I paid the bill, I of course wanted the passport back, but no, I had to collect that the next morning. Wrong – you have my money, I want my passport. After the third repetition of my side of the argument she relented and gave me the passport back. I figured out the next morning why she wanted to keep it, but basically it is just poor process to make up for inadequate processes elsewhere.
Saw a funny thing in the camp supermarket this afternoon. It's quite a large supermarket for a campground and sells everything – food, water, softdrinks wine, beer, toilettries, camping, beach, and sporting equipment. It's all very well laid out, so that all the toiletries are together, all the drinks together etc. The checkouts show the same lack of customer focus as the rest of the campground and European supermarkets in general, so it always takes a while to get through the queues, and “express lanes” - forget it. Anyway, Anne and I were there with our usual daily – 1 cold beer, 1 cold sparkling mineral water, 1 packet of crisps order waiting patiently in the queue. The couple in front of us were getting their goods scanned, when the husband headed off into the sporting goods section and comes back 30 seconds later and thumps a box down on the counter. With nothing else to do, Anne and I both looked at what the late breaking item of sporting equipment was that had to be purchased....... a 6 pack of condoms. Really, sporting goods.... OK. Anne and I did our best not to look at each other because another immature bout of the giggles felt remarkably imminent. I was tempted to say “we're open until 7:30 if you'll be needing anything else, but kept my comments to myself. As for the size of the box, well, you'd have to be hung like a garden hose to need a box that big for 6 condoms.
I mentioned yesterday that we'd seen the big vats of wine in the little dairy in Maddalena. We saw one of our neighbours in the campground taking a big flask of wine and filtering it into individual bottles. I would have loved to see what the bottles were, because they were all identically labelled and from the looks of the label, it looked quite nice. His secret is safe with us.
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