G-L-O-R-I-A

This morning, my mother-in-law and I decided to have a kid-free outing. We hopped in a cab and headed over to an area of town known as "Gloria," that has a reputation as sort of a shopping mecca. There are many shops of every kind, and the prices are really good. I wish I had the words to describe it for you. It's just street after street and block after block of huge variety stores, small specialty stores, and mazes of every kind of shop in between. We saw one whole store devoted to buttons and zippers. There were gobs of shoe stores and as many clothing stores. There was a store where they sold nothing but store fixtures, including an army of manequins. There were jewlery stores and hardware stores and junk stores and baby stores (to name but a few), not to mention a whole section of street vendors. It was almost more than we could take in. In fact, we feel as if we certainly didn't see everything there was to see. But, we had a blast and arrived home with a few treasures. One of the highlights was when Sharon bought a pair of shoes for Ruth and I asked if she could pay by credit card. "Yes," the lady replied, as she put the shoes in a bag. Then, she left the store, motioning for us to follow her. We walked down to the end of the block and entered another shoe store, which must have been the official credit card running location. So funny! This outing was also a really great opportunity for me to practice my Portuguese, and I thought I was doing really well until someone said, "Fala muito bem!" Oh well. Guess I'll keep practicing. At least I got us there and back safely and soundly, and with another fun adventure under our belts.