Grocery Shopping

Thought we'd share with everyone a typical grocery shopping trip - only because they are all so fun! So we primarily shop at Carrefour (figuring it is a global chain, meaning reliable safe supply of food) - we supplement Carrefour with trips to Pines or City Shop which are expat grocery stores where you can find Dorrito chips for $7 USDabag, a can of soup for $5 and a box of 12 candy canes for Peppermint Bark for $5. Andy & I went to Carrefour last Friday and it was such a sight we just had to take some pictures! Friday is fresh eggs day so A LOT of people come out, first thing in the morning and wait in line for their eggs - there were probably 40 people in line and you would buy a bag of eggs (not sure how you actually get them home without breaking!) We bought our pre-packaged eggs (which are still not refrigerated, similar to the milk!) and moved on to the fresh section - where you can find fish in the tank, or already gutted sitting on some 'bloody' ice (and no I am not swearing in UK English!) or you can also find your fresh eel, frog and turtle. There is a reason we usually don't take Zoe & Abigail grocery shopping (and it isn't just because we've seen lots of unpackaged raw meats in the carts that kids ride in!). So we move on to vegetables - where people rummage through various green leafy veggies in buckets on the ground and also where the cleaning crew dumps their garbage into the same buckets as you are searching for just the right 'fresh' veggie - we decided to go without the salad that day! Take Wal-Mart on a Saturday afternoon in the States, double the people shopping in store, add some really strange selection of goods (oh and take away most of the stuff you like to buy) and you've got it! It is quite an adventure - that must explain why we do it so often!!

On a different note, we did hunt down the one Krispy Kreme location in Shanghai last Saturday - fun trip on the metro to West Nanjing Rd, asked lots of locals where to find it (since our only information was 'near the metro stop') and finally came upon a most wonderful sight! Even with the 'hot now' sign not lit, they handed us donuts as soon as we walked in, we watched them make the donuts, then proceeded to buy more donuts to eat there and finally bought some donuts to bring home! Obviously they were quite tasty!