Not sight seeing in Cádiz; Immigrant benefits; And that old favourite - Noise in Spain.

Not a great day for sightseeing in Cádiz yesterday. First of all, the receptionist's "20 plus a bit minutes" walk from the hotel to the old quarter turned out to be 20 plus 20 minutes. Secondly, the cathedral closed early at 1.30. By which time I felt it best to take a tiffin. That done, I set off for the Cádiz museum, to find it closed. As was the Exhibition of Roman Life in one of the major squares. On top of all that, wi-fi wasn't available in either of the 2 squares where it should have been. Bloody Christians and their pagan festivals. I knew we should have gone to Morocco!

One thing I did see was a large-ish Italian cruise ship in the harbour. It looked rather like the one which keeled over in shallow waters early last year. I think that one had a big C for Costa on its funnel too. You'd have thought they'd have got rid of that.

And I could get into the Catalina fort, built to deal with the depredations of the beastly British and the dastardly Dutch in 1597. As you go through the gate and into the courtyard, you realise you're in the Alamo. Or what Hollywood thought it looked like anyway.

It's interesting to see the Spanish press following the EU line that Britain is being illegally miserly and discriminatory with its medical benefits for immigrants. The truth is that the UK is paying the price - though no one knows how much - for being overgenerous with its entitlements. Here in Spain, it was 10 years before I could get anything free from the Spanish national health service, even though I was an officially resident EU-citizen. Naturally, things are even tighter now. But this is old news.

Finally . . . I'm writing this in a café in which there are only 4 other customers, 2 men and 2 women, all in their sixties. All of them are communicating by shouting, simultaneously, even though they're all at the same table. Not only can I not hear myself think, I doubt I'll be able to hear my mother on Skype when I call to wish her a happy new year, after I've finished my coffee. Spain is different. Who was it said all Spaniards are born with a built-in quadrophonic sound system? With the volume at 11.