Monoprix.

Bonjour once again! Welcome back and thanks for taking the time to keep up with my travels. I appreciate it very much. Sorry it took me so long to write this one, but this is a bigger process than I expected...

Grocery shopping.
Where shall I begin? Ah yes... Monoprix:



Inside (notice the electronic price displays):



So I went grocery shopping or "faire des courses" on Sunday for the first time. Let's say that it was an experience! First of all, at this point I knew zero french. This means that unless I could visually identify a particular item, I was just taking an educated guess as to what it was. I would say that about 50% of what I bought that day was a guess. LoL... Here is what I purchased. Take a look:



Le Fromage.
So here are some things that I noticed when shopping on this premiere occasion. First of all, Parisians love cheese. There are way too many kinds of cheese in this country. They have Chevre (goat, "chevre" actually means goat), Gour Noir (goat, very tastey), Compte (cow, has been made for centuries), Brie (cow, goes well with Champagne) and the list goes on forever... I ended up only picking up about 3 different kinds to begin to figure out which I liked the best... Gour Noir was my favorite! I really didn't like Chevre. It just tasted gross (kinda moldy)... Oh well, no problem. I have about 250 more kinds to try...

Le Jambon.
Next, there seemed to be a lot of "le jambon" or ham. So I asked one of my friends why? They told me that pork (le porc) is a favorite meat in France. In the lunch meat aisle, there was ham everywhere, but only a couple selections of Chicken (le poulet) or Turkey (le dinde). I guess I better learn to like ham.

Here are some other interesting facts. Everything is in the metric system, which in and of itself is fine. But it changes the way everything looks as far as packaging is concerned. For instance, milk does not come in 1 Gallon containers. It comes in 1 Litre containers. All the nutrition information is also worded a bit differently due to the metric system. So instead of it listing a serving size and then the calories, fat, protein, etc. per serving, it lists how many grams the product weighs. Then, it lists it like this:

Poids net: 120g (total weight of the product)

Pour 100g (per 100g)

106 kcal (Calories)
447kJ (Joules = high school chemistry? what the...?)

Proteines 22g
Glucides 1g
Lipides 1,5g
Fibres <1g

Notice that instead of a period as a decimal point, they use a comma. It seems to be in all number related items. No clue...

Le Pain.
Also, bread doesn't come packaged as it would in the States. Here it is fresh and on shelves. You simply choose the one you like and wrap it up yourself. Weird, but it tastes delicious!

Finally, here are a couple comments to wrap up the whole grocery store debacle. THERE WAS NO PEANUT BUTTER! What?! They had almond butter, caramel butter, chocolate butter, but no peanut butter... That was a disappointment since it is like my favorite snack. Also, there are zero medical related items in a grocery store or any store in France for that matter. Even for contact solution, you need to visit "une pharmacie". These are small, cozy store fronts where you can get anything from hydrogen peroxide to penicillin.

So there is my shopping experience in Paris. Hope you enjoyed:) Check back soon for updates on my night out at Le Cab (one of the hottest night clubs in Paris). As well, as a full detailed story about my trip to London to see The Arcade Fire.

A Bientot.