There are lots of lovely things about going on holiday.
For starters, there’s the foreign food – we’re in France this week, courtesy of Keycamp, so there’s been beacoup de baguette, brie and red wine. Quite delicious.
And there’s weather. We’ve been blessed with hot, sunny weather all week, which means our holiday has basically been spent either on the beach, or in the swimming pool. Perfect.
But the best thing about holidays? The very, very best thing?
Foreign supermarkets.
Come on, it can’t be just me.
I love, love, love foreign supermarkets. I love seeing completely random products that I just know will be brilliant before I even taste them. I love heading off to Hyper-U or Carrefour, and filling up a trolley with random things.
Like little tubs containing tiny frozen balls of Coca-Cola. Genius.
Or Milka chocolate bars, complete with tiny shards of Daim Bar inside. And hot-dogs called Knacks (c’mon, there’s never a bad time for a good snigger at a comedy product name).
Then there’s those things that are just so random you have to buy them – there’s a thing here called ‘sauce du pizza’ (fortunately, I’m fluent in French so was able to decipher the meaning of the name). It’s a squeezy bottle, like a ketchup bottle, but contains tomato puree with oregano and garlic, so you can squirt it straight into a pizza base. What’s not to love about that?
My favourite discovery this trip, though, wasn’t food or drink. It was this trolley, in the local Hyper-U.
Brilliant. In Tesco, we bribe our children into little plastic cars, which we then get to push around the supermarket as well as all our shopping. "Come on darling, have a little ride in the brum-brum car. It will be fun!"
Not so in France. Here, it’s all, “You’re old enough to walk so I think it’s about time you stopped idling around and pushed your own shopping, mon amie.”
Flea absolutely loved it. And – happily – one of those little suckers holds a whole week's worth of shopping for one adult and one child. I’m thinking of starting a petition and getting our local Tesco to invest in a few of them.
