Up early, then a phone call from
work – they come in at rather unsavoury times – either 7:30am or 10pm (NZ
5:30pm or 8am). We arrived in Perpignan a little late, then took our No.9 bus
and hopped off close to Castorama to sort the shower. The second-choice one
we’d flagged didn’t look so good in the flesh as in the memory, so decided on a
third choice. Again, it has walls and a high floor so it will be much easier
for us to fit. So that was sorted easily, delivery after 5 May when they are
back in stock.
We also found some excellent
anthracite-coloured tiles for the bathroom floor which we will pick up when we
hire a van for IKEA, probably in a week’s time. I’m so looking forward to having a sofa to sit on, and a desk to work
on. Not that a bike box doesn’t make a satisfactory desk, but it is rather low,
and it would be nice to get my bike out at some point! We didn’t want to risk
adding the tiles to our delivery order and having them discovering they perhaps
should be charging us more for delivering the kitchen. We just can’t believe
that our kitchen complete with oven, cooktop, range-hood, fridge-freezer, sink
& mixer will only cost around NZ$1600, delivered upstairs to our living room.
Did a bit more thinking on curtains, locks, storage and more, then off via Fly (like Freedom Furniture) to
Leroy Merlin to check out a little basin for our bedroom. Found the one we had
seen in a brochure, but didn’t like it much so chose another and bought it.
We are getting a little sick of
making decisions. There are always things to be weighed up one against another,
invariably in different stores and with different prices and implications. Not
having a vehicle is an issue as we have to think about delivery all the time,
and you can’t simply drive from one store to another then back again as you
might in Nelson. We’d hoped it would be a lot of fun choosing all the furniture
and fittings, but it is only partly the case, tempered mainly by time and
transport issues.
A good find on our way back was
that some of the Céret buses have a stop at the commercial centre, which means
we can get there or back in a single €1
ride without going all the way to the Gare and getting a local bus back to the
shops. It also means we can pick up Karen’s bike from Decathlon as it can be
carried on the Céret bus.
So it has been a good day. We’ve
sorted the shower, the bedroom basin, bathroom tiles, made and received some
phone calls on the mobile, bought some duvet covers, found the direct bus stop,
and sorted some work.
