So I had my first trip (of probably many!) in the weekend to IKEA in Malaga in Spain. We went on Saturday with half of Malaga, or so it felt. Started of by queuing for about 10 min. to get INTO the store. People were happy though and there wasn’t any stress or bad manners.
But once inside everything just took ages…First of all it is really difficult to get a good overview of the shop when there is 20 people between you and the shelves on one side. So to properly see all the products, you almost had to zig-zag from side to side. Which of course presented another problem as this meant you had to get across the general stream of people pushing forwards. This is slightly challenging being two adults, a baby, a pushchair and a shopping trolley.
But we managed and got to the cafeteria long before 14 when we knew the Spanish invasion would arrive.
Must say I was a bit disappointed with the food. They had a lovely picture of a piece of salmon with boiled potatoes and vegetables, when in reality what you got was a piece of fish and some chips. That’s it. No veg at all and no mention of boiled potatoes. Lets see how they perform next time, because there will be a next time as quite a few things on our list were sold out.

And El Rubio? He was just so good as always. Charmed quite a few girls on the way. I kid you not, we should almost start renting him out to single guys looking for a girlfriend, he is so good at getting female attention.

So all in all a good if long day. I don’t know why I thought it was possible to just nip into IKEA and pick up a few things, because it always end up being a day trip.

I do love Mercadona. And no, I am not being unfaithful to El Hombre, because Mercadona is a supermarket (I know, I know, here I go again. More about supermarkets and food.)

It is just reasonably priced and really do have almost anything I need. If I am doing a “Big Shop” I will go to several shops to get everything on my list as they are good for different things (at different prices) but Mercadona is my main shopping place.
Lidl: Cottage cheese, Ryebread, Orange Juice, Cheese twirly snacks, German Peanut snacks (soo good, but only eat if you have water nearby as your whole mouth dries out)
HiperCor: Cheddar, butter, Dime, Fancy cookies and sometimes herbs.
Mercadona: All the rest!

But even after visiting 3 supermarkets, there are some things I miss down here:

Lemon grass (Is that one or two words? Anyone? Anyone?)
Fresh Coriander
Filo pastry
Nice Butter
Strong crumbly cheddar, not rubbery (Believe it or not, I had a really good one in Las Alpujarras of all places. Can hardly get more remote than that)
Buttermilk
Fruit yoghurts that don’t taste like they have half a kilo of sugar in them
Organic food (I can get it but have to go to special little shops which play airy fairy music and have posters for Ashtanga* Yoga and sell hemp clothing. Kinda like what it was like at home about 10 years ago)
Fresh cream

Sure there is more and will update accordingly.

* My spell check suggested I wanted to write Santana Yoga?