Al cine

We decided we needed to get out after work today, so we went to Amposta to see 12 Years a Slave. Dubbed into Spanish of course. It was very good listening practice, but it's a long film (too long for me, 90 minutes is my limit unless the film is truly exceptional!) and it was rather exhausting. Luckily the story is very straightforward, so you know what's going on even if you don't catch all the dialogue. In fact that's its shortcoming for me. It's a powerful film, but the story line and message are just too obvious and incontrovertible. No shades of grey, you know exactly who are the baddies and who are the goodies. I preferred Philomena, also a very moral film, but forcing you to question who is right and who is wrong, and whether forgiveness is possible or desirable.

We'd gone to a 5:30 showing (which was very popular to our surprise) so it was dark when we came out. The GPS led us badly astray (a very common problem in Spain); we got hopelessly lost on the way back and ended up going well out of our way (and switching the GPS off to stop it confusing us, after it sent us down one dead end too many). Dark, unfamiliar roads, lots of traffic -- not fun.

Still, we finally got back to Riumar and stopped off in what we know as "the German bar" (because it's always populated by Germans) to recover from the drive with a beer. And then S did a sterling job of knocking up a meal in about 10 minutes (salt cod and orange salad), and we sat down to dinner at the reasonably Spanish hour of 9:30.

Oh, the photo -- few photo opportunities today, so I ended up swiftly snapping on the industrial estate where the cinema is while S was buying the tickets (only 3.50 euros each! An absolute bargain).