(written 11/4/06 11:50 Greek time, in Náfplio, Greece)
We awoke and made tea, deciding that we would spend another day exploring the city. On our walk to the bus stop some friendly French people with a huge motorhome picked us up, explaining (we think) that the previous two days they had had to walk to the bus stop and the didn't want us to have to! Very nice of them, and an interesting look into a rather different way of travelling around Europe. Also stretched our brains to come up with the appropriate French words in the muddle of languages we were beginning to accumulate in there.
As it happens the motorway's design meant that they couldn't take us all the way, so we walked the rest of the way to the bus stop and waited until it came. Once it did, we got off a little early at a large electronics shop we had seen the previous day, in the hope of locating a camera charger. It turns out that the place wasn't open and wouldn't be for a month (according to one of the workers stocking the place), despite the huge neon signs on the front proclaiming otherwise!
No matter, we pulled out the trusty GPS and headed further into town, stopping for a couple of coffees and a slightly dodgy breakfast.
One of the reasons we had decided to stay an extra day was that the town was rather large, so somewhere had to have something capable of charging the camera battery. The tourist office suggested Le Court Ingleis (a huge department store), who had lots of things but suggested we try a little Optica place on a small square a while away.
On our way there we had a lunch of juice ("zumo" is juice here and the stuff is fantastic - always freshly squeezed from local oranges), coffee and boccadillos (rolls with various fillings).
The camera store turned out to be closed for siesta - annoying if you want to shop at lunch time but a blessing at night. So, we found a few other things to do while we waited - first being a walk around some of the many gardens in town. Into the impressive Plaza de España, back along the edge of the Guadalquivir River, and past the cathedral, one of the many places where we could have embarked for a horse and cart ride around town.
Back towards the camera shop, we sat in the next square at a café and had some lunch, and on a whim I wondered whether there was wireless anywhere - turns out there was! We quickly uploaded as much blog as we could before the battery gave out on us (old battery on this laptop unfortunately) and grabbed emails.
Come 5pm all the shops around us were opening again for the evening's trading, so we headed back to the camera shop. The staff there knew their stuff, but couldn't quite get a generic charger they had to charge the battery. I asked if I could have a look, as the manual for it insisted it would work for this camera, and a bit of fiddling later we were away! The most annoying problem the break-in had caused was finally solved.
To celebrate, we picked Bodega San Jose from Lonely Planet as an interesting-sounding place for a few beers and wandered down towards the river to get there. Turns out it wasn't really to our liking due to the stench of the resident cats and the non-appealing décor, but we had a good chat there anyway.
After a quick tapas stop in the old town at Cerveceria el Cordobe, we ate dinner a rather touristy but nice place where we got some really nice food.
Having spent a little more that day, we decided to risk the bus and walk back to camping, which turned out to be fine, and we settled into the tent where it yet again rained all night, but we stayed dry.
bus back to camping - rained all night