A shopping trip for a new telly.

When we were in Sheffield we had a wall mounted 28" tv, but Neil always wanted a really really big telly, at least 42". So, in one of my good moods I promised him, when we were settled in Spain we would get one.

So, 5 months later, it's official - we're telly hunting so we must be settled!

OK, time to interrogate some of our new friends, who already have big tellys, about where to go. We have a reasonable idea what we are after but want to get a good deal and then check to see whether it's better to buy in-store, on-line in Spain, from the UK and ship out - oh, the options are endless.

It doesn't matter whether we buy from a spanish speaking place or english and we are happy to drive up to an hour to check our options.

First place recommended was in Mojacar Playa from an english owned shop so off we went with the parting phrase being - they are a little more expensive but the service was superb. Ok, we don't mind paying a little for good service so armed with a notebook we took a drive to Mojacar Playa.

First impressions were not good, I have to say. It was a really small room with only about a dozen tv's on display - I wanted choice, I wanted a bank of tv's to look at, I wanted something to shout at me 'take me home' - but they did have both Sony & LG, the 2 makes we were interested in so we didn't give up straight away. Well, after 15 minutes and a few prices scribbled on a bit of paper we were sent on our way having been told to ring them back in a couple of weeks, well maybe a bit longer and they may have more information for us. Er, shouldn't the shop be ringing us? I have to say that I was significantly unimpressed by the whole experience and left the shop hoping we didn't end up buying from them as I had been made to feel that we were completely insignificant to them. I'm wanting to spend money now - not maybe in 2 weeks and I want to feel they are prepared to make me feel a little important to them, not as if I was an interruption to their coffee break. Maybe they have so much work on they don't need to try (isn't their a pending recession which is making the purchase of luxury goods plummet - obviously not here)

So, another conversation with another friend and we were off to Albox, if we get to the Indian Restaurant - we've gone too far. This time we walked into a large shop which sold everything for the home and had a reasonable range of tv's. We compared the prices to those from the previous day and we could see we would be saving €150 on the Sony and €250 on the LG. Result.

BUT, we had also heard about a shopping centre at Cartagena where Media Markt was. We'd never heard of Media Markt and had no idea what it would be like but..... it seemed logical to take a drive up there bearing in mind we would be spending roughly €1,000.

So, on Tuesday we were driving up to Murcia airport to pick up some friends and Lucy's Great Aunty Gladys - and we pass Cartagena on the drive up, so we decided we would set off an hour or so early and call off at Media Markt to see what they had.

Boy, were we in for a surprise!

Part 2 later.