Visits. Cards. Banks.

Having been here in Vigo for almost a month and today being a fine and sunny day, we decided it was time we visited the Castro, one of our favourite places around here. Up at the top we came across a couple of young men discussing in English what the funny little turret - tower affair at the corner of the fortifications might be. Was it a sentry box? Was it a place for the sentries to go and warm up on cool evenings? So Phil put in his two-penn'orth by suggesting it might be a latrine. After all it is conveniently placed so that everything could be "flushed" away over the wall!! OK. Getting down to basics. 

 The young men were here for a wedding. The bride is from Vigo and so many of the guests had come over for a long weekend. Very likely she is one of the many young people who went off the UK in search of work ... and found a life partner. We advised the young men to go and visit the Islas Cíes if they had time. You can just see the islands on the horizon in the photo.


Having done our bit for local tourism we made our way down to the cafe, discovering new fencing en route and a set of steps which get half way down and peter out. I am pretty sure that last year they were barricaded at the top to prevent people doing just what we did. But we made our way down safely admiring the local flora as we went. No fauna in evidence! 

At the cafe we had a moderately expensive clara (small shandy): €5 for the two whereas two small beers at the Midcentury cost €3.80! But we did get crisps and olives. And when we had sat for a while with our shandies, checking email on our phone courtesy of their wifi, the waiter brought us a generous serving of Russian salad. This is an innovation for that cafe! 

There was a large sign on the wall: NO ACEPTAMOS PAGO CON TARJETA. So it has wifi but no credit/debit card machine. I wonder what the increasing number of (mostly young) people who never carry cash would make of that. In Manchester I have noticed some who pay for items costing as little as 40 pence with their cards. Presumably they never need to use the loo on the main Manchester railway stations as you cannot get in without putting 30 pence in the turnstile. No card machine there either! 

 I was reading about Sweden which is rapidly becoming a cashless society, according to some reports. Certainly in the big cities people appear to use cards, or increasingly their phones, to make payments. And 900 of the 1,600 bank branches no longer keep cash on the premises or take cash deposits. What do they do exactly? Count the cheques? I suppose it must reduce bank robberies. No bags stuffed with high denomination bank notes! 

And many of them don't have ATMs either, especially it seems in rural areas. Now that last one did surprise me. I know of lots of places in the UK where the local bank branch has disappeared but at least they still have cash machines. 

Does Sweden have no old ladies who insist on having their money in cash and keep in under the mattress?!?!