First Shopping Trip with Alice and Françoise !

Woke up to a beautiful sunrise this morning, a sunrise that took place at 8:45 am Always thought that they happened much earlier in the am guess not when you are on this side of the pond! :)

View out my bedroom window

With the greeting of this lovely sunrise pink sky usually indicates it's going to be a nice day, doesn't it??? :) We had a heavy frost over night, definitely a chill was in the air but it wasn't raining and that was a good thing! It has rained for the last 4-5 days, the day would start out looking promising and just when you are ready to head out for a walk or to do something outside, bang the sky opens!

Jean and mon aime out and about this frosty morning, ground all white

Today it didn't matter if it was raining or not because today was the day we were going shopping, that you can do rain or shine! So off l go with Alice, Françoise and god forbid let's not forget the shopping list!!!! A list that Alice and Françoise spent over an hour preparing as this list holds the important ingredients for our Christmas celebrations, food, wine, champagne, scotch, rum, etc and of course, Christmas gifts!

Example of the narrow roads for which we drive on. No wonder people drive small cars here, it isn't just because the gas is expensive!

First stop........ Le Neubourg............. As the ladies did some Christmas shopping it gave me another opportunity to look around the village and take some more pictures. There was one store that l looked at, it was all chocolate and the things they can make into chocolate....... amazing! I didn't look to see the prices of the items as l can only imagine that they were expensive.... 

Everything you see in this picture is CHOCOLATE, the horn to your left, the boots to your right and everything else in between.... yummy

Second stop........ Mutant........... Grocery store. The first thing you notice when walking through the doors is the liquor isle. They have more then just wines here, they have vodka, rum, whiskey, the only thing l didn't notice was they didn't seem to carry much of anything in terms of beer. Prices of alcohol here are very inexpensive, cheap actually. A 26 oz of Gin could be bought for 14.00 Canadian. I bought four bottles of Riesling (one that we have been enjoying at the house) for 16.00 Canadian. The other thing l noticed was the cheeses,on to the cheese isle. Cheese is very, very inexpensive, l bought 12 different cheeses (yes apparently we are going to be eating a lot of cheese over the next little while!) for a grand total of 22.00 Canadian. With the amount of food that was bought at this store l would think that we are going to be feeding an army! I am sure that Alice and Francoise found that the shopping went a lot longer then what they would normally experience but then they never had a Canadian who is experincing their shopping for the first time either! Lot's of observations and questions on my part! Shopping completed, my total bill was 41.00 eu.

Prices are as followed, to the items above
........1.15eu..............1.09eu.................1.53eu

Last stop.......... E. Leclerc....... To compare this store to something back home, it would be like taking Walmart and a Liquor store all wrapped into one! Pretty much your one stop shopping kind of store. Once again the ladies had their list in hand and off they went to make their purchases. This gave me time to browse around and look at all the different things that they have here. There isn't much that this store is lacking, they even have a pretty much anything you would want for alcohol is here. 10 year Malted Scotch ( if you are into that kind of stuff) to Moet Champagne (sells for 28.00 eu), l bought a bottle of Bailey's (26 oz) for 14.00 Canadian. You definitely have to know your prices though, as an example candles are expensive here. Something that you can buy at the dollar store, as l have seen the very same thing there, you would pay 4 times more here. Prices of fruit are comparable to the prices back home. The one thing you have to keep in mind when food shopping is the fact the weight is measured in kilo's not in lbs. So if you are not use to that, a lot of things you are going to think are expensive when in fact they are not. I enjoyed my shopping, here and l look forward to coming back again when there isn't such a big crowd. I think everyone had the same idea, rainy day, let's go shopping but then again, it is only 6 days to Christmas so l am sure that had something to do with it! :) Total of my shopping at this store.......... 27 eu., bought bottle of Bailey's, two bottles of red wine and a fleece jacket.

All and all a very successful shopping day and l would say that with all the food and alcohol that has been purchased today, we are going to have great food and wonderful drinks and lot's of it during this holiday season!