Mercadona

These are a couple of pictures from Mercadona, our local grocery store. Grocery stores like we have in the US (aka one-stop-shopping) are only slowly becoming common in Spain. Until recently people were forced to go to the pescaderia (fish market) to get their seafood, the panaderia (bread store) to get bread, carniceria (meat market) to get meat, etc. However, these stores are slowly sprouting up around Spain and seem to be fairly popular, especially with the younger generation of shoppers.

This is truthfully what the meat market looks like there and that is all real meat you can buy. Those are legs of jamon (pronounced ha-MOAN) which is a slowly cured ham leg that is sliced very thin and is famous in this region of Spain. It looks slightly off-putting at first but once you taste some good jamon, nothing can ever compare.

Even in Spain little boys are obsessed with Spiderman. Thought that was ADORABLE!

These are the buggies in Mercadona, or at least one of them. So the regular metal carts like we have in the states are actually locked up and cost money to use. But these little beauties are completely free and awesome. If you hold them with the green handle it is like the hand baskets we have at stores in the states - used for a couple small items needed. However, when you use the giant orange handle, it actually has wheels and can be pulled or pushed around the store like a buggy! It is fantastic! The other amazing thing about Mercadona is that it is 2 floors with of food so there is a moving sidewalk that takes you down to the lower level and is specially designed to grab onto the wheels of the little carts so they don't roll around on the ride up or down. Makes grocery shopping that much more fun!