Bunyola, Mallorca, Spain

Today I trained twice and in between went to three grocery stores (they were adjacent to each other). In other words, it was a fun day!

I trained an hour and a half in the morning and also in the late afternoon. It was very hot at 4:30pm but pretty dry so not unbearable. I hit a ton of balls and picked up a few tips…and all day long heard the instructors saying “feet, feet, move”. Spanish tennis is constructed from the ground up. I was of course the oldest person around by decades and that included the parents of the students who were observing. There seemed to be a fair number of British kids. Very few instructors or kids were wearing hats or sunglasses…hmmm. The clay here is much thicker and slower than Bordeaux. The balls are heavy. I like it.

After my 9:30 hit, I stretched then went to find Aldi. The navigation system in my car is good, so it was a smooth ride on the narrow Mallorcan streets. Aldi was next to Lidl (both are discount grocery stores) and across the street was a normal grocery store. I started with Lidl, which was the most popular of the three. Lidl had great bread, nice apples and tons of seafood. Since it was my first stop and I had no cooler, I didn’t buy any, but maybe next time. There was tons of fish, and shellfish…mussels, clams, squid seems popular and octopus (pulpo) too. Lidl had nice lambs lettuce (mache in French, Felt Salat in German), which is so good and hard to find at home.

In Europe, all the grocery carts have a system where one puts in a 1 or 2 euro coin, releases the cart…then upon returning, reattaches the cart and gets the coin back. It works pretty well. Aldi does this in the USA but it’s only a quarter (since that’s pretty much the biggest coin in common circulation).

I went to Aldi next which was similar, though the bread didn’t look quite as good, nor did the apples. But I got the basics there and Aldi also had tons of shellfish and fresh fish.

Last stop was the regular store, for curry mango sauce for sandwiches and jam. Heinz makes the curry mango sauce but apparently doesn’t sell it in the USA. I was looking for peanut butter and found some in Lidl but no natural. I’m hoping in Lisbon we have a blender and I can just make some!

I had a good sandwich for lunch and at 4:30-6 trained again. After that I was beat.

Tomorrow I only train once, in the evening so am going to see where this wooden train is going every day.

Hola Mallorca…Hace Caliente!