Foreign Perspectives

In common with most things in France, the dead hand of government is evident here and shops are only allowed to have sales on set periods each year so the “Boxing Day sales” can’t start until January 10th and will end on February 17th (up to the 20th in some Departments). It is, of course, typically French to have overlly strict government regulation where much less is required and, of course, to ignore everything outside France. Amazon France seems to get away with ignoring the limitations on sale dates although I imagine that’s only because the French regulators haven’t gotten around to looking at the Internet site yet.

Unfortunately, that date means that each year the shops locally lose a considerable amount of business as many Spanish come here for their Dia de los tres Reyes (day of the three kings) on January 6th. In Spain, January 5th is effective Christmas Eve and the children receive their presents on the 6th (though globalisation means that they generally get presents on Christmas Day too these days).

One of the things that we did ourselves, in common with a considerable number of French who live around here, was to check out the pre-Christmas offers in Spain. Among several things that we bought there was the lovely little Nikon S10 (the updated version of the S4) for EUR 299 vs the £405 (about EUR 600) that Jessops in Belfast were asking for the outdated version. Of course, that means that we paid the slightly lower Spanish taxes rather than the French ones and naturally such practices mean that the French customs people create a massive backlog of cars at the border point with a view to illegally attempting to recover the French tax from people. In fact, the French government seem to be the only one on the continent that’s ignorant of the fact that no additional tax is payable on personal imports from another European country.

So, sorry if you were looking forward to some Boxing Day sales in France but at least you’ve not long to wait now.

What’s in Port Aventura though? It’s divided into four themed areas: Polynesia, China, Mexico and the Wild West. Both China and the Wild West areas had quite a strong sense of theming but it seemed a little superficial in the other two. The Polynesian show was the only major one that we saw (as noted, there was little information about show times so we may have missed heaps of them) and was reasonable although as I’ve been to Polynesia I might be a little harsh in my criticism of this one. None of the rides in the Polynesian area take small kids.

To my mind, Port Aventura’s Wild West area was by far the best with a very high density of small rides and activities plus a few larger rides at the edges. However, if you’re wanting the more adventurous rides, head for Mexico or perhaps Polynesia instead.

There’s the usual train running around Port Aventura but with only two stops which are poorly marked on the maps, we were pretty much leaving the park before we found one of them (in the Wild West). The boat between the entrance area (just before you go into the themed areas of the park) and China was easier to find but we were told that we couldn’t go on it from China as we had a pram. As it turned out, this was nonsense as we were able to go in the other direction but is an example of the much lower level of custmer service as compared to a true American park.

Pay attention to the prices in the Port Aventura shops too. We found that some things were going through the till at twice the prices marked.

Anyway, overall, Port Aventura is a nice enough park but avoid it if you have any kids under 1.2m high and keep an eye on the prices.

During the day there isn’t a great deal to see in the Rambla itself as it’s basically just a long wide street with an assortment of small kiosks selling newspapers and some souvenirs at one end and on-street restaurants at the other end. In amongst this you’ll find a series of the street-theatre statues of varying degrees of interest. At the moment, the two most interesting are the two skeletal cyclists but the mix varies throughout the year.

More interesting during the day is the market just off the Rambla itself where you’ll find just about everything on sale. The entrance to the market is about half-way down the Rambla.

The Rambla itself is mainly a mix of newsagents, touristy places and lots of petshops. If you’re looking for proper shops the street immediately to the left and parallel to the Rambla has quite a selection of boutiques and El Corte Ingles is just across the road from the entrance to the Rambla (it’s like a Spanish Marks & Spencer).

The area really livens up in the evening when you can sit in one of the street restaurants and watch the world go by.

Take care with your possessions in this area as it’s a major magnet for pickpockets.

The other thing that we found, which is not advertised anywhere outside the Port Aventura park, is that there is very, very little for children under 1.2m high even though they charge almost full price for admission (EUR 35 for adults, EUR 28 for 4 to 11 year olds at the time of writing; under 4 are free). In fact, the height limitations had no overall consistency with rides wanting anything from 1m, 1.1m, 1.2m and 1.3m plus others with age limitations (usually 5+) and others with both. We found that something like 90% of the rides required a height of 1.2m so if your child is over 4 but not yet 1.2m then it’s probably not worth going. Most of the small-child-friendly rides seem to be in the “Wild West” area of the park which tends to be the last area that you reach if you follow the main route round yet there is no indication of that.

We were expecting to be in the Port Aventura park until well into the evening, yet despite advertising night admission in a number of places we found that the park closed very abruptly at 7pm. In fact, it started closing up considerably before that with various shops and the like finishing up more like 6pm and by 6.30pm the security people were noticeably sweeping people towards the entrance. At the time we were there, sunset was around 7pm or so and the mosquitoes were out in force by then. Perhaps you think that they can’t do anything about that? Well, Disney World is built right in the middle of a swamp which ordinarily would mean millions of mosquitoes yet there are none so it is definitely possible to do something. As it was, we are covered in bites.

Anyway, if you’re going to Port Aventura, March to June or September to October should be fine and leave before the mosquitoes arrive around dusk.

Barcelona extends for quite a bit and it’s very easy to get lost in the city. Net effect is that, despite numerous visits, our navigation within the city is dreadful so we were very surprised when we managed to arrive in the Rambla area with no wrong turns along the way.

We started off with lunch in El Corte Ingles (a Spanish version of Marks & Spencer). The view from their top-floor restaurant is spectacular as you can see. Unfortunately the prices for the less than brilliant food is equally spectacular. The portions are very large though.

Our next stop was the Rambla, of which more in a later posting.

One thing that I was particularly looking for was a large but carryable Spanish/English dictionary. The snag is that Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia and so a lot of the books shops are Catalan, so lots of Catalan/English and Catalan/Spanish dictionaries but it was quite a while before we found a bookshop with Spanish books. Although, you’d think that the selection of Spanish/English dictionaries would be as large in Spain as it is in the UK, in fact it’s much smaller and the dictionaries are, on the whole, more expensive for comparable quality. The sole exception to this, at least in the bookshop that I looked in, was the Collins dictionary which is pretty much the same price (allowing for the difference in currency) and even adds a version of the dictionary on CD which isn’t available in the version of the book on sale in the UK. They change the name of the dictionary so the full Collins dictionary is called Universal in Spain, the Concise edition is called Master but otherwise appears to be identical.

Normally in Spain, car park prices are pretty low but that’s definitely not the case in central Barcelona where the prices are comparable to those in London so do check the prices if you’re planning on parking all day.

Barcelona is spread out quite a bit with a number of separate centres, but if you’re thinking of a short break to Barcelona, you’d not go far wrong basing yourself in the Rambla area.