I'm all lost in the supermarket
I can no longer shop happily
I came in here for that special offer
A guaranteed personality

So Mark took us to a EAT SOUP place for lunch today, and there was no toilet. The perfect excuse to cross the street and go into Harrods and see if it's as shitty as daf said the day before.

I expected Harrods to be something similar to the Spanish El Corte Inglés, but I was totally surprised by what I found out. The first area I was in when I entered the huge building was the "Luxury articles" department, full of jewels and stinking parfumes. I kept walking towards the inside, randomly looking for a toilet. Not finding one too easily in the first floor, I took a tiny staircase and started going up and up. As I visited more floors, I realised the organisation of the shop is quite chaotic. You could find the carpet department just next to the pianos, which was a huge area filled up with pianos and people trying them. I also found modern and classic furniture, electronics and other random departments here and there, but the toilet was nowhere to be found, despite some of the exits did have indications for nearby toilets.

In the 4th floor, though, I picked up a good trail. The Luxury Washrooms were clearly what I needed. A few minutes later, the luxury washrooms were nowhere to be seen. Eventually I thought I had mixed things up, and that what I had seen was an indication to the "luxury washroom items" department or whatever, but suddenly, there it was: Men's Luxury Washroom.

As I had taken more than five minutes to find the place, I guess I was in a hurry because the rest would be about to leave EAT. I approached the entrance, and was puzzled by a guy sitting on a chair nearby rushing to open the door for me. Suspicious. I quickly went in, while I thought that having a dude that opens your toilet door most probably meant giving tips when you exit. Well, I didn't have a single coin with me, so that would be a problem. I had a glance at the place, and there was nothing luxurious at all in the toilet. I really wonder what makes it luxurious, besides someone opening the door for you...

Seconds later, the guy was behind me, with a "dude, you owe me something" look in his face. Carlos came to the rescue in that precise moment, when he phoned to ask me where the hell was I. When the phone started ringing, I said "oh fuck", trying to sound worried, and rushed out again, not having completed my mission.

In short, Harrods sucks, daf already told me. The decoration is horrendous, and it seems they try to give this impression of expensive store, while much of the stuff they sell is crappy or average anyway. The Egyptian Staircase was the worst of all, totally out of place. Now I know there's an equally horrible fountain dedicated to Lady Diana and Dodi. Too bad I couldn't find that bit in the maze...

It's not that I didn't expect this fight to end up like it ended this morning, but I hoped the shameless politicians would try to somehow cloak it behind some procedure that resembles democracy in some way. No way. When so much money is involved, things end up being how corporations want things to be.

This is why I've never believed a word about the "European construction process" or anything. It's why I decided to participate in the referendum to vote No instead of staying home to contribute to the massively low turnout.

Welcome to the Banana republic.

Second full day in London. Too bad we couldn't go to the Speaker's corner, as we had to be at Mark's place early. After a more or less ok morning (Matt will argue about this, as his laptop decided it was time to start dying, and now resets every 15 minutes or so), we went for lunch to an Italian pub/restaurant nearby, called Papparazzi. Despite the horrible name, the food was good. Of course, and for the nth time since we arrived, we discovered that the two guys sitting right next to us were Spanish as well, when one of them made a remark about sucking cocks. The waitress at the hotel's restaurant is also Spanish and is called Rocío, I totally caught her when I asked for some "té" instead of tea. She thought she hadn't understood my English and said "Sorry?". :)

Work ended a bit later today, and at 19:30 or so we were out to decide where to have lunch. Daf guided us to a Thai restaurant nearby and despite my #1 priority being avoiding spicy and hot food, I ended up breathing like a dragon, and wondering if my lately weakened stomach would permit an aggression like that. After having dinner and confirming that it's impossible to make it under £10 in the area, we made our way to the hotel, going past Harrods and a Zara shop.

I don't think daf took us to a really interesting place today, but here's one of the nice places we saw yesterday, the 99 step staircase.

According to him, it's the best staircase in the planet. It's a long, steep spiral in one of the Underground stations, and could be used as a cool scenario for a 3D shooter game like Half-Life. If you trip over and fall down, you're in trouble though, because I don't expect you to stop rolling down until the end, and that must be a nasty fall.

At daf's and Matt's room, they were watching a humour show on TV while I answered to a few mails, and then we had a short talk about usability and GNOME, just before I went back to my room to write this blog entry and prepare to sleep. It's getting late already. Mako, you'll probably enjoy my next story, but I need to take a picture before I can publish it.