Rio Sul Shopping

What better to do on one's first day off work than to go shopping. Yuk!

 

Among other places, we ended up at Rio Sul Shopping in Seixal, now fully upgraded from Continente Seixal to the full glory of a second tier mall. What's wrong with it? Well for a start, I never liked the name. Why name a shopping centre after an obscure tributary that flows into the River Vouga in the centre of S. Pedro do Sul? Maybe the marketing guys know even less Portuguese geography than I do. I also found their advertising campaign very bland - nothing new or dynamic - just about sums it up in fact.

 

Sonae decided to put in a parking space location system, the first I had seen in Portugal, which guides you to a free space. All very well, but the corners are too tight at the end of rows, so they have closed the last space to allow cars to make the turn. But they forgot to tell the parking system, which detects no vehicle and shows the space as free. As a result, all rows have a green light! There is also no blue light to show that only disabled/pregnant spaces are available. The wonders of modern technology!

 

The restaurant area is huge, with a nautical theme and a wonderful glass roof. The heat was unbearable with the only free tables inevitably in full sun on a day which reached 36ºC with people advised to go to the shopping centres to get away from the heat - lovely.

 

As for the shops, the poor selection demonstrates the second tier qualities of the centre. I think I'll stick to my quick, surgical supermarket visits at this one and reserve serious shopping for Almada Forum, the Colombo or Amoreiras.

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