Grocery Stores are the Best!

What do Waterhouses on vacation with a day with no plans?

We go to two grocery stores and a farmer's market, of course!

You long-time readers of the blog may recall that visiting foreign grocery stores is one of my favorite travel activities.  It is an inherited trait.

After visiting with the grands for a while at their home, we felt the collective compulsive need to Be More Productive (i.e. continuing visiting while walking around a new location).  We've been to San Diego enough times to eschew the typical tourist destinations and would have been at a loss had Dad not noticed a sign for a farmer's market on our way over.  A farmer's market on a sunny San Diego Saturday morning?  Perfect.

After sampling the produce, flowers, and paella there, Grandpa suggested we check out "The Arab Store."  This turned out to be North Park Produce, and it was gobs of fun.  Walking in the front door we encountered many hookas, some delicious sample goat cheese, and signs advertising specials in Arabic.  This bodes well.  Here are some of our finds:

A dignified Andy peruses the aisles.

Various Cans of Meat

I got to practice my Cyrillic alphabet a bit
(It's Ukrainian Borsch, by the way)

Not just rose water, but dillweed water, willow water, fenugreek water...

Eggplant #1 - American
Eggplant #2 - Indian

Eggplant #3 - Italian
Eggplant #4 - Chinese

Several varieties of Pomegranate Molasses
(Which will always remind me of Hamdi's)

Dad found that favorite Peruvian drink, Inca Cola

"El Autentico Chao Mein"

Bread longer than my torso!

Whew! It was quite the store. We sought refreshments afterwards at a Greek place, then stopped by Trader Joe's just because we could.  We had about an hour before meeting with the rest of the family for dinner, so we swung by the beach as you saw previously.  We capped off the day with a dinner at the 94th Aero Squadron restaurant, which was delicious.