We walked a bit up and down the City Centre, down to the Quayside.
At one point, we happened upon "The House that Moved." In 1961, this house was dismantled and re-assembled in a new location, in order to make way for the new Inner Bypass road cutting through town.
It dawned on me that this sounds like it may have inspired Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, what with the guy's house being destroyed by Vogon crews in order to make way for the Intergalactic Bypass.
Still, no signs of Vogons or Ford Prefect or anything. Any sci-fi geeks have any idea of the origins of the story? Leave a comment.
In the meantime, though, here's a little taste of how I like to be a tourist:
Adams claimed that the title came from a 1971 incident while he was hitch-hiking around Europe as a young man with a copy of the Hitch-hiker's Guide to Europe book, and while lying drunk in a field in Innsbruck with a copy of the book and looking up at the stars, thought it would be a good idea for someone to write a hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy as well. However, he later claimed that he had told this story so many times that he had forgotten the incident itself, and only remembered himself telling the story. His friends are quoted as saying that Adams mentioned the idea of "hitch-hiking around the galaxy" to them while on holiday in Greece, in 1973.
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