Market day today but
unfortunately we had to skip it. Yesterday our now fully functioning letterbox
revealed a brochure from Castorama, which included a sale of beds. We need one
for when visitors start arriving in May. We are currently making do with the
mattress from the sofa bed (bought from IKEA) on top of the blow-up mattress.
Castorama had one bed for sale at 60% off, which unsurprisingly appealed hugely
to us. Yet another trip into Perpignan! Off on our usual 8.15am bus. Arrived at
the central station and had to find our way to the connecting bus stop.
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| You know you're in France with breakfast menus like these |
Wandered in what we thought was the right direction and ended up in a gorgeous
part of the old city. It really is very attractive. River through it, parks,
old castles etc. and lots and lots of cafes. Managed to see a rally of old cars while we killed time before our bus. Finally arrived at Castorama at
10.30am.
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| Rally-car rally |
First things first, we asked
about the 60% off bed only to find they don’t have one to show us – they are
all at their depot. How are you supposed to buy a bed that you can’t even jump
on it to test it out? Even the shop staff hadn’t seen it. Commenced to jump on all the
other beds for sale and hummed and ha'ed a lot. One of the shop assistants
finally found out that the one at 60% off is a medium bed, rather than the firm
we are after and more suited to occasional guests. That made the decision for
us. We definitely want a firm bed. All the others on sale are still too highly
priced for us, e.g. over NZ$1000. We really don’t want to be paying anything
like that as we want to keep our investment here reasonably low. So, after
buying a TV wall bracket we rapidly exited Castorama and began walking in the
direction of cycle and scooter shops that we had previously found on the
internet.
Rather a long circuitous walk but found the Peugeot scooter shop. Very nearly walked (rode) away with a scooter. Came across a very
good second-hand one and hummed and ha'ed again. We are getting a little weary of making decisions all the time- is this an age thing? Anyway, soon
realised that we don’t have any insurance to cover us if we rode off into the
sunset, nor do we have any garaging in Céret sorted. Decided we would wait
until we can get these two things organised, hopefully on next week. We know that
the scooter is just what we are looking for, and is a good price being
second-hand. We hope to go back and bargain over helmets. He has already thrown
in a double helmet box for the back of the bike.
Next stop was the cycle shop just
down the road. We have discovered that there really aren’t that many mountain
bikes for sale. Biking here is pretty much around-town stuff or road cycling.
This was a huge cycle shop but there wasn’t much to choose from(in our price
range. Decided that the best option is either the bike we have already cased
at Decathlon (around the corner) or one in the Industrial Zone just out of
Céret. Onwards to Decathlon and had another look at the bike there. Matt black
and purple – not really my colours, plus it is heavier than we thought. My
preference now is for the local bike at the same price and perhaps we can
bargain him down a little.
The next bus back to Céret was
not for another hour so we ended up back at Auchan and checked again for our
muesli. Yes! Back on the shelves so we stocked up in bulk, along with a few
other groceries. Bought an ice-cream for lunch (at 4pm) as we had only had one
small pastry at a little deli while waiting for the bike shop to reopen at 2pm.
Many shops here close from 12 until 2pm (even the food outlets). Onto our
wonderful €1 bus and
back to Céret bang on the dot of 5pm. Now chilling out with our cask of red
wine, crackers and gooey blue cheese J.
Tomorrow HAS to be a day off.
