What is there to tell this week? Well off the top of my head, not much. What have we been up to? And now when I start to write, I realise that, actually, quite a lot.
The week was full of interviews and preparations for some big Christmas events and activities I am planning. There was time, though, for lunch with a colleague, Kike who took me to the shopping centre near work which I had never visited since starting this new job last October. It’s called Plaza Norte and actually I was not impressed. It’s just another of those huge characterless shopping malls with the same high street brands you see anywhere in the world. Sometimes I hate globalisation. One good thing though is that there is a Fnac, that great book store which we browsed round together. However I only usually read in English and my bookshop is Amazon.com, so there was not much there for me really.
The weekend brought some good family time with home cooked lunches. But it also brought a nice dinner out on Friday with Eladio to the Oliva Negra which I can highly recommend. The food is great, original, creative, tasty and not too big portions. We shall be going again. It is fast becoming the girls’ favourite too.
Saturday had Eladio and I shopping at Zara Home for wonderful colourful Indian print tablecloths and wine glasses. A few years ago I acquired some 25 great balloon shaped glasses which have slowly dwindled to about 6. So it was time for some new ones.
One of the places we went to, to look at glasses was El Corte Inglés, Spain’s biggest department store. Yes, we got the glasses, but we also bought a new mattress for our bed. Is that news you say? Well, for us it is, as ours is 25 years old and was getting rather saggy. Of course, we bought the best the shop had to offer because, I argued, this was going to be the last one we ever bought, specially if it has to last another 25 years. My daughter Susana gasped when I told her what it cost and she told me quite wisely that her Ikea bed complete with mattress had cost a tenth of that and that she slept fine on it. She can only imagine we will sleep like babies or angels on our new mattress. Well, I’ll let you know when it comes.
Last night, after so much shopping, we stayed in, after our daily walk that is. Susi stayed in too and we got a McDonald’s take away and watched a Spanish film called “Ladrones” (robbers) with that great boy actor, Juan José Ballesta. It was not a bad film, if a bit slow.
Today, Sunday, has been a typical Sunday at home in the winter. I made roast lamb for lunch, English style with all the trimmings, including mint sauce.
In the morning we had our upholsterers in to change the fabric on our dining room chairs and bay window cushions. The idea came about after we realised how badly they matched the Zara home table cloths. Truth to say though that the fabric was rather old hat and the chairs needed a fresh look.
So all in all this has been quite an expensive weekend!
The week ahead brings with it all sorts of different activities including a course on corporate blogging by Enrique Dans, a course on event protocol, a team building dinner at Casa Lucio and finally the Finnish Chamber of Commerce annual Christmas dinner on Friday at the Velázquez Hotel in Madrid.
Sounds fun!
I wish you all a great week.
Cheers/Masha
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