Back in Gibraltar
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Sun 11 Oct 2015 12:13
I was able to buy English books for the kids at the local Gibraltar Bookstore, including Usborne Stage One readers for Pavel. The ones I purchased, like Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, are stories that are appealing to boys, which is sometimes a challenge to find. So many books are geared towards girls. I also found the 2016 Dandy and Beano Annuals. These are classically British compilations of comics from the previous year, bound in a book form. I used to receive these as gifts, along with Polo mints, from my English great aunts when they visited my family in Newfoundland when I was a kid. Catherine loves them, and I even caught Pavel opening them up and spontaneously reading! I loaded up on a few gifts for the kids for later, and took them to the shop that sells Italian ice cream, where they indulged in some of the most excellent gelato that we have encountered in the Med. I took them once again to Burger King on our way the the supermarket, where I
made 4 separate trips to provision the boat. When I took Pavel with me on an errand, we stopped off at a playground on the way home, and Pavel found a great tree to climb and swings. On a bench, was what appeared to be a homeless man, and to my surprise, I noticed that he was reading The Economist. It made me question my assumptions. I wonder what stories he could tell.
We did quite a bit of socializing with the other Discovery owners. They are wonderful people. We had pre-dinner drinks three times and dinner out with the whole crowd for Spanish Tapas. I really appreciated the openness to having our children join us on board their homes. I thought I had a lot of energy, and could hold my own at a party, but despite being the youngest person ( but not that young!) in the group of owners, I couldn't keep up! I will blame this on having two young children to care for, but I don't think that is really the reason. Everyone else is retired, and I think once they put their previous roles aside, they can just live life to the max.