Day 194 - Wednesday, July 13th, 2011

After a poor night's sleep, things could only get better and that they rapidly did, starting with a lift into work from colleague Gary, followed by an excellent breakfast of banana, fruit salad, muffin and orange juice in the cafe yards across the road from work. HR promised that they would get the Air Con fixed, although I wan't convinced that it would be fixable. Karen introduced me to all the staff and it seems like yet another friendly Maples office!

Best of all, at lunchtime a (free!) daily buffet is served in the staff kitchen, with a choice of 2 hot mains (both if you like), rice, vegetables, soup, extensive salad bar and sandwiches - ace! This went out with the boom several years but not here! A driver came to collect me to go to the car rental place and I signed up for a luxuriant yellow Subaru Ignis hairdryer! Well, it'll get me from A to B and back, which will do very nicely, and it also has excellent air-con and pumps out dance choons on the radio from Spin FM.

Yes, I am harping on about air-con a lot but it is hot hot hot here, and 100% humid, so it feels like you are entering an open-air furnace when stepping outside. After work I drove to Kirk's supermarket - a large Tesco-sized affair, and a good place to sample how costly goods are here. €2 for a tin of Heinz Baked Beans? That'll give you an idea. Because the rate of income tax is 0%, the price of goods in general seems to try to do its best to compensate. €85 for 3 bags of shopping later and I was on my way back to the apartment, where to my surprise, the aircon was working in the bedroom, though the living room and kitchen remained steam-room-esque.

Dinner was enjoyed in Ristorante Casanova - about a 10-15 minute walk away. The food was excellent - caprese salad, pollo corovado (pasta chicken) and an excellent tiramisu. There was a resident harpist too, going round each table and knocking out some relatively modern classics such as Unchained Melody with brilliance. Unfortunately he only played for about 30 minutes, and then the CD player took over - as I left, "Time To Say Goodbye" was being played for the actual EIGHTH time - they couldn't do it better in nearby Guantanamo Bay!

A Pirate Party ship coming into dock as I strolled to dinner

Contentment  : 16 / 25

Excitement :     3 / 10

Memorability : 3.5 / 15

Overall Score : 45% (50th out of 194)

Memorability :