Buying Fruit: Save Money on Food and Experience Spain

Want to save money on a trip to Spain and feel good at the same time? Look for a fruit stand and stock up on fresh fruit.  Simple advice, yes, but you’ll thank me for it.

You’ll eat less at restaurants, have less desire for fast-food restaurants (McYuck), and you’ll keep from being hungry throughout the day.  All you need is some fruta.

Pictured is a small fruit stand in Malaga, Spain. Fruit stands throughout Spain will usually have a wide range of fruits on hand: apples, oranges, kiwis, grapes, bananas, peaches, strawberries, rasberries, avacodos, pears, plums, apricots, melons, lemons, limes, olives and tomatos.

Most fruits are easy to carry in a knapsack as you tour around Spain. Eating fresh fruit is good for your health too. Many fruits are high in Vitamin C and other vitamins that will keep you at your best while traveling in Spain.

To find fresh fruit in Spain sometimes requires stepping outside of the traditional tourist areas. That’s a good thing for the traveler who wants to experience Spain the way the locals do. Look for the word “fruta” in store signs. You’ll likely be heading in the right direction. In many places in Spain, the small fruit stores offer the opportunity to buy fruits from a locally owned store where the person operating the cash register is or is related to the person who owns the place.

Any town with a sizable population will have some sort of grocery store. Grocery stores are another place to get fresh fruit and a whole lot more. Grocery stores also usually sell large containers of water cheap. Grocery stores tend to be away from the tourist areas.

In Ronda, Spain, for example, there are at least 3 sizeable grocery stores, but they are all a long walk from the tourist areas and not easy to find unless you have a map and know the address.

Look for the name Mercadona. Mercadona is one of the largest grocery store chains in Spain. Also look for the names Dia, Carrefour, Spar, Supersol, and Lidl as these are some of the more popular grocery stores. In the larger cities, El Corte Ingles is a large, 6 or 7 level department store that often has a grocery store in the basement level (floor -1).