Grocery Shopping

One of the big advantages to doing a home swap is that you have a fully-equiped kitchen in which to cook. This means big savings: you don't have to eat every meal out at expensive restaurants where the food quality is often unknown. We are planning to treat ourselves to a couple of good meals while we are here, but most of the day-to-day meals will be made in our "home".

Going to a supermarket in a foreign country is always an experience. Our local Irish store was no exception - the cereal, types of milk, bread, vegetables were all different than the garden-variety US versions, which is kind of fun. I was kind of annoyed to find out that you have to pay for your shopping bags (25 cents each), then bag your own groceries. But I was appalled to find out that you actually have to pay 1 Euro (about $1.30) for a shopping cart! The hell?

Still, we bought groceries enough for our first week's meals for about $75 - around what we would pay for one nice meal out. So the trip was a success.

Comments

[Sylke]

Hi, unless you were at a completely untypical supermarket you get the money back that you put into the shopping cart when you take it back to its 'station'. From my experience most supermarkets in Europe nowadays use this method to make sure that their shopping carts don't get taken all over town by those people who don't own a car to transport their goods home. Oh, and if you would go to Superquinn (one of the big Irish supermarket chains) you normally also get somebody who will pack your groceries for you into your bags. The reason you have to pay for bags is so that people actually use their own bags or reuse shopping bags they already have - this is far better for the environment. (I actually prefer to pack my own bags, but that's a matter of habit.)
Regards,
Sylke