Partial rest day!

The morning of Monday dawned and we were all up at a reasonable hour....about 9ish!  My Ethan, being the early riser he is, came running across to our apartment and was knocking on our door to tell us they were all going for breakfast in a hotel on the sea front and to find out what we were doing.  The prospect of a cooked breakfast was to tempting for us all and we hurried to get dressed!  We got to the hotel and as we had missed the actual breakfast sitting we had a choice of plain omelette or cheese omelette.....well at least I wasn't cooking it!!  A plain omelette accompanied by some coffee later and we were walking back to the apartment to plan out the day.

This turned out to be a day that we spent by the pool enjoying the sun as we had not been able to find any cars to rent!  We had visited a few places before breakfast but they didn't have any cars available, so Dad called the guy he hired his car from.  It all sounded a bit dodgy but I couldn't find anything online and what I did find was twice as much as Dad's Dodgy Car Rental Man, Farook!  He got through and we arrange for him to drop a car off near us later in the day.

While all this went on the everyone else was in the pool or sunbathing.  I got bored.  So me, Mum and my brother went to the local supermarket in the one car we had along with Liam and Elinor to pick up supplies for the apartments.  It's located in one of the shopping malls that have apparently started popping up at the edge of huge sugar cane fields near the main junctions across the island.  The malls all look new and modern and so out of place but you can see where the island is going when you look at them.  With access to the rest of the world via TV and the internet, I imagine the people of Mauritius are wanting more and are able to visualise what they want based on what they see in Europe and USA.  I guess my Dad's generation and their children didn't have this visualisation as they didn't know any different.  They didn't have access to the same media outlets as my cousins generation has.  They didn't really know any different.  Now it must feel like they want it all!! Why shouldn't they have the same tech that Europeans and Americans have access to?  Why shouldn't it be the norm?  Anyway, I digress.  That is the sort of thing my brother should discuss!

Shopping was great fun!  All these foreign brands, new flavours and products (foreign Fanta is amazing!!! So many new flavours.  Get them in the UK, Fanta!!) to choose from.  We tried not to be influenced and buy items for the sake of it but it was difficult!  Then there was the "how much is this in pounds?" question everytime we picked something up.  Got bored of that in the end so we stopped bothering to work it out!  And I got to try and speak some French!  Thankfully most of the staff could speak enough English to converse but I gave it a go anyway and got by to a certain extent!

View from the supermarket!

When we got back everyone was still in the pool.  Me and my Dad went to meet the car guy and then dropped him off at a bus stop so he could get home.  I am now the driver of a battered silver Nissan March (micra to us)!

We spent the night in the apartment where I got to enjoy some of the local Phoenix Beer! :-)