26 November 2009

Girona.

Tonight I am going to show you some more pictures from our visit to Spain, this time we will take a look at Girona. Unfortunately we only got to see a bit of the place but here are some pictures from the bits we did see.

The bridge over the river to the old part of town. We headed straight for the cathedral.


We did go inside and found it fasinating but as with most of these sort of places you aren't allowed to take photo's inside so sorry about that.
Next we took a walk along the Roman Wall in the beautiful warm sunshine. In the picture below you can see part of the wall that we walked along in the bottom right corner. The picture was taken from one of the many towers in the wall.
Also amongst the Roman remains were buildings and courtyards one of which you can see in the picture below.
The short time we were allowed to spend in Girona passed very quickly and it wasn't long before we had to make our way back through the narrow streets to the coach park.
As before I will include this link [Click Here] for those who want to read more and see a few more pictures.

I happened to see the item below earlier today and found it both interesting and staggering.


THE ITEM BELOW IS COPIED FROM YAHOO NEWS

The Taxpayers' Alliance has reported that local councils in the UK collected a total of £328m in parking fines for the financial year 2008-2009. The good news for drivers is that the amount is actually a 16 percent reduction compared to the £379m collected the previous year. Of all the UK local councils, 99 percent responded to requests for information.
Shockingly though, of the ten councils who collected the most fines per head of its daytime population, six are permitted to use parking fines in whatever way they wish - bolstering the theory that fines are just another revenue raiser. The worst offender is Kensington and Chelsea council in London, which collected a staggering £85 per person. The average per person across the UK is £6.14, which is bad enough, but that puts Chelsea's figure in sharp perspective.
In Scotland, Edinburgh council is the worst offender, charging £12 per person on average, in Wales it's Denbighshire with £5.62, and Northern Ireland's average is £3.50 - its fines are dished out by a single body.
Chief Executive of the Drivers' Alliance, Peter Roberts, said: "Parking enforcement has become a massive money making industry and we are seeing unscrupulous and target driven enforcement of parking laws where the penalties far outweigh the offence. This report shows that some local authorities are treating drivers unfairly and cashing in on parking fines."

2 comments:

Sara said...

Lovely photos. I think the architecture is amazing.

I laughed at your parking ticket story.

Here is one from my city:
http://troyrecord.com/articles/2009/11/25/news/doc4b0cd40a49fef986379921.txt

I guess no matter where you live, they want you to pay to park.

Laurel said...

Girona is the town I remember most fondly from my visit to that part of Spain. I have some photos of a beautiful garden overlooking the sea that I visited while I was there, but didn't make note of what the place was called. Just thinking of Spain and looking at your beautiful photos makes me feel plesantly warm, a welcome illusion as it is -10 C here tonight.