shadows and shopping carts

What about shadows? We have been telling you in words how dark it is here in the winter. The picture of James and Mary in front of the castle was taken at about 1 PM. It was a clear day which by itself is unusual. If you look at their shadows you may get some feeling for how high the sun is at mid-day. This is as high as it gets this time of year. The picture of the car illustrates two things. One, how narrow a one way street is here and two, how dark it is at noon. The glow of the tail lights is from my camera's flash. It fires at noon outside. By the way, this car is not moving. It is parked. I don't know what traffic is supposed to do.
On to shopping carts. They are different here. I wanted to take a picture of the wheels but my battery wasn't up to it at the time. All four wheels pivot. This is good if you want to go sideways with your cart and quite troublesome when you don't. You know how hard it can be to steer a sprung cart in the states. Try to imagine this with four wheels that steer independently. Also, you can see a man with a cart going up what would be a flat escalator. He is not holding this cart. The wheels have rims that are about 3/16" wide and 1/4" high. On the sides of the wheels are rubber feet that hover 1/8" off the floor. When the rims fall into the slots of the ramp the cart sits on the feet because the contact part of the wheels is in the groves of the ramp. The cart holds itself in place until you reach the end and the rims roll out of the groves. I thought this was pretty neat!!



P.S. We will be leaving four days earlier than planned because our flight was cancelled and this was the best we could do. We will return to the States on the first of January. See you all sometime later.