Thanks to thousands of years of development, we can consider our human intuitive view of the physical universe to be largely accurate. Things move through the air with predictable trajectories, look about the right color whether the lights are turned on or off, and generally seem to feel about the right weight when we pick them up. For the most part, our intuition is fairly accurate.
There are, however, some things which defy such intuition. Layla and I witnessed an example of this in Nerja.
The two following photographs are the back and front bumpers of a Peugeot Partner goofy European van thing, as seen in the graphic at the top of this article. They show the positions of the cars immediately adjacent to the Peugeot, and how close they are.
By my estimate, there is probably around 3" of space between these two cars.
And clearly, here, they're touching.
I would certainly not blame you if you're thinking that this poor sucker got boxed into this spot by the cars immediately fore and aft of him. Our fantastic human intuition tells us that there's no way this car could have been slid sideways into the spot.
But here's what makes this so incredible: Layla and I watched this guy park in this spot. Yes, with the two other cars there. Parallel parking at its finest.
I estimate that it took a fifteen-point turn (or thereabouts) to pull this off. Every "point" was punctuated with him hitting one of the two cars. But hey, that's what bumpers are for.
I guess the funniest part about this is that the van was a rental which he was returning to a shop which told us the day before that they had no cars to rent to us. We saw the rental lady walk outside minutes after he parked this car. She shook her head a number of times.
Oh yeah, I also remember that Layla and I mocked the driver of the Peugeot and a woman driving a Honda Civic who tried parking there first and gave up because the car was too damned long. "Hah! Good luck!" we said, only to watch the Finest Parking Job Of All Time unfold before us. Awesome.
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