The Delights of Shopping….

A lovely start to the morning, swimming in the 9pool. It is salty not chlorinated. Slightly odd but exhilarating nevertheless. It is too hot to do very much, even reading feels a bit too arduous.

After dinner I went with Annie, Joab and Bea to the nearest hypermarket. I always get excited walking down the aisles of shops when I am abroad. I love seeing the differences, I get somewhat giddy with it all. Over the years with globalisation, many brands are similar the world over, with sometimes a slight regional twist.

Heinz tomato sauce had it’s own special stand, making it ‘exotic foreign food.’9

Bea is allowed to pick something she likes, but only one thing. So….our first stop was the toy aisles, so many similarities with the UK, Paw Patrol paraphernalia, Marvel cups, toys, etc. Bea made a great decision, a Dino world carry case with play doh and a variety of moulds. Endless possibilities!

Nostalgia overtook me when we went passed the stationery or is it stationary (too hot to think). In times gone by Annie would have made a bee-line towards the exercise books, shrouded in foreigness and other, squares not lines. To be honest, I would be just as excited as Annie, but just managed to keep it under control.

My favourite part of was walking along the fruit and vegetable aisles. I have never seen so many different varieties of tomatoes, some the size of a small melon, some triangular. I picked up a lot of different types of tomatoes, that pretty much got demolished by the early evening.

As I said yesterday, food does look more appealing on a rectangular plate.

The frozen aisles were good too!

I bought what I thought was a vegetarian pizza, I hadn’t realised that it had an abundance of blue cheese…..something Pete hates. But he was a trooper and ate it up. To be honest by the end of the day we were starving.

I also bought gazpacho, so many different varieties. That’s reflective of the fact that everyone has their own take on how to make this dish. There are many stories of where gazpacho originates from, one is that it came with the Romans. It was a verynbasic version, just bread, oil, and garlic. Quite different to nowadays as the peppers and tomatoes would later be added after the conquest of the Americas.

I love Gazpacho as much as I love tortilla de patat. With the added gorgeous weather, it certainly feels quite authentic.

After yet more swimming and general laziness, we headed to a bar.

As we sauntered down the hill to the square, we wandered down the small streets, we saw houses with cardboard metals tied to the doors. I am sensing it could be linked to the Olympics possibly. There have been 14 athletes representing the Balearic Islands. Six have brought home medals, two gold, one silver and three bronze. Good going for a small group of Islands!

We found the Bar s’aturada 23. It was a bit quirky but had a good atmosphere. We had a bottle of local red wine. It was OK ish but a great place to catch up on the news etc.

Walking up the hill passing these majestic palms, i think they are fan palms as they are the only indigenous ones in Mallorca. A real sense of being somewhere exotic.