In the spirit of the rest of the 'I love...' threads, here's a new one about finding Carcassonne or other games in places you didn't expect to (i.e. non-games shops). Here are three quick stories from my early days in Lisbon to get things going.
1. There are many wonderful bookshops in Lisbon. One of them is the Bertrand bookstore in Chiado which has been open since 1732 and claims to be the oldest bookstore in the world. A month or so ago I spent some time browsing books there. At the back they have a section with kids' books, and hiding on the top shelf in the most remote corner of the bookstore are a handful of modern board games, including Carcassonne!
2. A few days ago junglegirl and I were at a big electronics store called Warten to buy a microwave. While we were at the counter, we remembered that we also wanted to look at printers. I left junglegirl at the counter and went to see if I could find the printer section. En route, I discovered (to my surprise) an aisle with board games. The even bigger surprise was that there were three shrink-wrapped English-language copies of The Mystery of the Abbey (the 2007 DoW version with expansion, I believe). When I first started expanding out of board games, MotA was one of the games I came across and was interested in (it's a Clue-type game). I never got it and probably still won't, but it was pretty crazy to see it in an electronics shop nevertheless.
3. Back at the same mall a couple of days ago, we walked past a tobacconist and there were a handful of modern board games in the window, including - boom! - Kingdomino. A month or so ago I had visited a board game shop and hoped to find Kingdomino there but they didn't have it. To see it so randomly in a tobacco shop was very unexpected, so I grabbed it!
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