The last week and a half has been a crash course on Kiwi shopping. There are very few American branded retail stores outside of fast food chains: McDonalds, KFC, Burger King, Subway (wow….they really took the cream of the crop from the US!). Its been an amusing experience buying things for our apartment when you don’t know what the name of the store is that carries it. A few times we’ve approached random people on the street: “Where would you go to buy sheets and towels?” “What stores carry a GPS?” Through trial and error, we’ve found a few equivalents to our US chains: The Warehouse is their Walmart, Dick Smith’s is Best Buy, PacNSave is the biggest grocery store, Briscoes is Bed Bath and Beyond. Their shopping malls are about half the size of a typical US mall. We haven’t found one yet that is not a Westfields, they seem to have the market cornered.
For restaurants there is a wide variety of ethnic food. Lots of Asian (Sushi, Japanese, Thai, Chinese, etc), Indian and Kebab shops, English restaurants selling meat pies and fish & chips, cafes that have sandwiches and salads, burger places (the chain we see most often is murder burger, I still haven’t figured out why that is a good name. Those two words together do not make me hungry). There is a little bit for everyone, so you’re not going to go hungry in Auckland. Dana misses US coffee already though. Starbucks is available in the more populated areas and we saw a Dunkin Donuts in the airport and one mall, however they don’t do brewed coffee! Everything is a latte or americano or expresso. Dana used a coffee press for the first time yesterday after struggling unsuccessfully to buy a coffee brewer. The coffee for purchase in the grocery store isn’t very tasty either. She will likely have anyone coming to visit us smuggle in some DDs hazelnut coffee- just a heads up!
It took us 2 hours to go grocery shopping on Thursday. Reason being that just about every brand was different than what we’re accustomed to, and the prices can be either sky high or super low compared to the US. Here are a few examples of what strikes us as very expensive versus what is inexpensive (note these are in NZ dollars and exchange is around .86 NZ / 1 US):
Expensive:
Chicken Breast – Cost is around $9 - $10 per lb
Corn on the Cob – You get two small ears prepackaged for $3
Peppers – Around $8 per lb
Tomatoes – $5.99 for a pint of cherry tomatoes
Cucumbers – $5 for one
Chapstick - $5 for one regular size
Soap - $4.99 for two bars of dove
Inexpensive:
Kiwi fruit – Around $0.60 per lb. We got 7 kiwi fruit for $1. Did you know that there is as much vitamin C in the kiwi fruit as there is in an orange? My new favorite fruit, don’t be surprised if you see entire future posts devoted to strictly to the kiwi fruit.
Apples – Around $0.75 per lb
Mussels - $1.00 per lb. I’m not a mussel eater, so I can’t comment on what a typical price is, but Dana is blown away by that price
Big day today. We’re making our way to the Auckland museum and tonight the locally much anticipated All Blacks vs Wallabies matchup! Oh, and thumbs up to the Auckland library system, you can get free internet up to 100 MB and they have an extensive list of travel books you can check out.
Tell Dana that everytime I have a DD hazelnut I'll think of her. That's about twice a day. If NZ is anything like Australia it's hard to get good products and they are very expensive when you can. If you purchase things by mail you have to add on a really high shipping fee. Have you ordered a hamburger out and asked for everything on it? I did that in Australia and I got just about everything from the fridge on it. It had beets, pineapple, a head of lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers etc. I had to learn to ask for just ketchup and pickles. How far are you from Australia? I rather like that Murder Burger, someone has a good sense of humor! Take care and have fun. Will you be working there Eric?
ReplyDeleteIt's a 3 hour flight to Australia. They just have a different style of food here, but it's all been great. We haven't ordered any hamburgers yet, but I'll ask for without beets if we do.
ReplyDeleteHopefully I'll be working. I've got 6 or 7 groups that I'm meeting with once we get settled in. The economy is better than in the US so that should be working in my favor, however given that I couldn't commit more than a year it may be difficult to get a regular type position. More likely I could do some consulting type work if that's in demand here. We'll see how things go. If I am unsuccessful, I'll find more time for blog posting, and perhaps I can practice my photography skills so I can become as good as you!