Mall Round 2

(photo courtesy of madrid.lanetro.com)

Yesterday Kathleen and I went back to the mall and it was open! Hooray! Most of the stores in the mall are the same as the ones you can find in the city center (H&M, Bershka, Desigual, etc), but the reason we had to go to the mall was to go to Primark, which is an Irish or British chain that sells super super cheap clothes. Yes, they will probably fall apart after one season, but oh well. (I know, I know--I'm buying more clothes even though I'm freaking out about whether or not there will be enough room in my suitcases as it is. It's foolish.) After Primark we went to Ikea and we had a good time designing our future living spaces...and trying out every comfy looking chair in the store.

(this was seriously the most comfortable chair I've ever sat in)

(Kathleen can't resist a good sale and was trying to figure out how she could pack this chair if she bought it--she didn't buy it.)

After some more wandering we found ourselves at Carrefour. Normally going to Carrefour would not be a big deal--it's the grocery store down the street that I go to all the time, but what I go to is a Carrefour City. What we went to yesterday was a Carrefour hypermarket, or pretty much the European Super Walmart (except I don't think they had clothes there other than underwear, but then again I was only there to buy toothpaste so I didn't look for them). I've gotten used to everything being relatively small in Spain, so to see a huge store filled with so much stuff (it's a different kind of stuff than El Corte Inglés because it's not like a department store) was really overwhelming, but it was also kind of exciting to have more than two brands of toothpaste to choose from and to be able to find Dove stick deodorant instead of the normal roll on/spray crap that is usually the only thing on the shelves. While I know that malls/hypermarkets are kind of the ultimate symbol of American consumerism (being in a mall in Spain feels just like being in a mall in the U.S), I am bit ashamed to admit that it felt oddly comforting to be at a place in which so much stuff was congregated. It was just so convenient to know that I could find everything in one place! So while I pretend to be more "cultured" now that I've lived in Europe, the truth is that I'm still a typical American in so many ways.

(I just look so happy to be among so much stuff, but I reality I was yelling at Kathleen not to take a picture of me.)
(We thought the digital price indicators were cool.)