I went back to Valencia for a long weekend and I have seen the future.
This is what I saw in the bathroom mirror. It shows how much water I am using and how much cumulatively in 24 hours, when it resets. I believe it is the first hotel in Spain to have this feature. Water everywhere and specially in countries like Spain is a scarce resource. At home in London I pay for water by usage; there is a meter under the pavement that is read without needing access to the house. I surmise that hotels will advertise how much water per day is included and impose an extra charge for higher usage. Why not? Right now this real-time tracking is a sustainability initiative.
“This system was implemented by Estimar Hotels as part of their ecological and environmental corporate strategy. Rather than charging guests for usage, it is designed as an interactive tool to encourage conscious water consumption. According to the chain, the installation of these meters in their Valencia location cut annual water consumption by 22%, dropping average guest usage from 160 down to 125 liters per night.” It did make me spend less time in the shower once I worked out what the hell the red numbers signified.
There was good weather. Always a bit too hot to eat outside, good food ‘tho sometimes a bit too fancy (fucked-up food as a friend calls it) and an excellent art gallery, not visited ten years ago. The opera schedule did not work but the Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana under the baton of Sir Mark Elder played the prelude to Lohengrin and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No 1. There was Richard Strauss after the interval but dinner and bed beckoned.
There was not good weather. On Saturday evening two extreme weather alerts pinged through on my ‘phone. The sort of thing I will get when there are incoming missiles. In the event, it was fine on Sunday until (Spanish) lunchtime when there was light rain. Crying llop (wolf in Valencian dialect) perhaps but often flash flooding takes people by surprise and takes lives.