Last Updated on 6 March 2023 by gerry

It’s a Thursday morning and we’ve woken up in our new “home from home” for the next 6 weeks – Arenys de Mar in Maresme county in Catalonia, on the mediterranean coast just north of Barcelona. The “home from home” narrative is a keen reminder to ourselves not to slip too much into “holiday mode” eating and drinking out every night. An attempt to replicate the type of expenditure that might be routine at home. We’ll see how that works out for us.

First things first this morning – the cupboards are bare, so my first orientation is simply to find a supermarket and get breakfast material, specifically tea, coffee, granola, yoghurt, soya milk, water etc. I’d spotted a Bonpreu Rapid not too far away and took the scenic route to find it. Bonpreu means “good price” and is a major catalan chain of supermarkets. This one was a bit bigger than the Tesco Express sort of place I was expecting, so I was pleased to find everything I needed at the aforementioned good price, including the Starbucks coffee pods that will really make my other half feel at home.

I tried to follow my nose to get me home and quickly ran into some steep hills, so that was an important early lesson learnt: the streets of Arenys de Mar are not laid out in a criss-cross grid of any sort, so it’s wise to figure out how to get from A to B in advance.

With breakfast safely delivered home and consumed, we spent the rest of the day leisurely getting our bearings in the immediate vicinity. Down the main street (el Riera), under the busy road and railway, onto the beach, around the harbour and back up through to the Riera sampling a beer and some Tapes in the bar right under our flat.