Shopping Excursion

Monday I decided to venture to the Galeria Krakowska, a big shopping mall in the city. I had been to it on my second visit here, so I knew there was another big grocery store inside and also to my surprise, an organic store. I loaded the kids into the car and off we went, it took about 20 minutes to get there and somehow I managed to park in just the right spot in the parking garage - right outside of the grocery store (called Carrefour). I was wondering how I was going to wander through the mall with my big 'ol shopping cart after I finished shopping! We walked through the mall and I recognized quite a few stores - Nike, H&M, MaxMara, Aldo, Lacoste, Sephora, and MotherCare. The mall was huge so there were a lot of stores I had never heard of too. 

I was tempted to buy this for Mike..they had the same for about 10 other countries

Forever 18 instead of 21 - is this because the drinking age is 18 here??

The organic market 

The organic store was very small but I won't complain - there was hardly any produce - was looking for peaches and strawberries specifically but they only had apples. I bought a few but when we got home and ate them they were absolutely terrible. I was happy to find hot dogs because I knew my kids would at least eat those for lunch but when we got home and cooked them they didn't like them either. I found some tahini and chemical-free cleaning products so I was happy enough. I was most excited about finding Lactose-free milk, not really sure that it's organic though. It's in German but look how easy that was to figure out what was in the carton?? Which makes me think of something totally unrelated, but flowers in Polish is kwiaty - does that make any sense??

The grocery store wasn't as big as Tesco so I wasn't as overwhelmed but unfortunately this meant that I couldn't find a lot of things - no pears, spinach, red onion, macadamia nuts, baby corn, spring onions, black eyed beans, or drinking straws. So this called for another visit to Tesco! I saved the trip for the next day though, as I got lost on my way home from the Galeria (even with the GPS - there were so many roundabouts and two roads running next to each other that I kept going the wrong way).

Before moving here I had read that fresh fish is very hard to come by. Mike has eaten out a lot since he's been coming here for work and there is always a fish option on the menu and he has said they were all delicious. I asked Michal about the fish situation and he said Krakow receives its fresh fish on Thursday, so it's best to eat it Thursday, Friday, or Saturday. But this really applies to shellfish, mussels, etc. because 'regular' fish can be (and usually is) frozen. We eat a decent amount of fish so when I got to Tesco (it was a Monday so I wasn't planning on buying anything) I decided to explore the fish section. Scaaaaary.....

Nope, I would not touch any of that foul-looking fish

There were huge freezers of frozen fillets. Didn't really look too hygienic to me (kind of like the big vats of sauerkraut I saw in the produce section)

And huge freezers or frozen veggies next to the fish

And here is a little video of Jack keeping himself (and Ava!) entertained while walking through the mall