Shopping

The apartment is perfect. It has four bedrooms, two bathrooms, an air-conditioned living room, fully fitted kitchen and a balcony that overlooks the busy road five floors below. I’m informed that it can sleep eight people if needed, more than enough for three of us and I begin to work out if it’s possible to spend each night in a different bed. It works out cheaper than sharing a hotel room and there’s a feeling of independence and freedom that you don’t get in a hotel. For ‘freedom and independence’ read ‘able to walk around in your pants’.

After sorting out keys, paper work and who was going to sleep where, we select to do what any English man abroad would do. Have a nice cup of tea. Unfortunately, the cupboards are bare so we decide to stock up on some provisions. The nearest supermarket is handily just a few doors away. Shopping in a foreign country is an adventure in itself. Everything seems familiar yet strangely different and while you are sure that you are buying teabags, there’s that little doubt in the back of your mind that they might be condoms or tampons.

There’s no mistaking beer though and my basket was soon filled with twelve bottles of a vaguely familiar looking lager that obviously had another name in Spain. Looking round the supermarket, watching the other shoppers, I discover a piece of wonderful design. The baskets have wheels on them and the handle is extendable! It isn’t long before I am dragging my beer behind me like the faithful companion it has proven to be.

After much wandering back and forth, marvelling at some of the more exotic food stuff, we have the ingredients for the Spanish equivalent of a good breakfast fry up, the prerequisite tea, coffee, milk and whatever basics we had forgotten to pack. Now we just have to negotiate the till. As you can gather, our Spanish is pretty much none existent and I have my doubts about the linguistic abilities of the girl serving behind the till. As it was, I suspect that her English was better than the majority of checkout girls I normally encounter in Brighton but we adopted for the age old method when she asked for money. Thrust a handful of notes at her and hope that we get the right change.

Job done we head home for a sit down and a nice cup of tea.