Grocery shopping in Romania

We woke up to rain yesterday morning, so we just relaxed at the guest house. There are only four rooms here, and the basement is the common area with a nice living room and kitchen space. We've been the only ones here for two nights, although two more rooms were occupied last night.

This is a popular guesthouse, but it's low season for tourism here in Romania, so it's only been full on weekends.

Around lunch hour, we decided to get outside despite the rain. It had actually stopped by then, but we were only going out to do some shopping. We've been making our own meals here, but only buying what we needed for the day, so we decided to go to a bigger store and pick up enough supplies for the next four days.

Our host Daniel pointed us towards the large Coresi Shopping Resort (yes, that's what it's called), with a huge grocery store. We got in the rental car and drove about 3 kms. Man, you have to have eyes in the back of your head to drive here! Big, busy traffic circles that seem to have cars flying around in all directions. But, we're doing fine. I've learned that when driving in other countries, just pay attention to what the locals do, and drive just like them!

Along the way, we stopped at at a smaller Lidl store. They are a discount type of grocery chain in Europe. The store was pretty busy. We picked up most of our vegetables at this store.

Then, we carried on to the big mall.

We were walking through the mall, when I checked my email on the phone. I was reading a blog comment to Ruth and the person who made the comment was recommending a restaurant here in Brasov. I read the comment, and Ruth pointed at a restaurant in the mall, and asked "is that the one?"

And it was! There are only two locations of this particular restaurant in Brasov, so it was a very strange coincidence!

Then, we went into the massive Auchan supermarket. I didn't have my camera with me, but here's a photo I took with the phone that I had posted to our Instagram account...

A photo posted by Kevin and Ruth Read (@travelwithkevinandruth) on Nov 8, 2016 at 5:35am PST

This has to be the biggest grocery store we have ever been in! It took us almost two hours to do grocery shopping. Of course, it's a little more of a procedure for us because we're constantly checking ingredients to make sure things are gluten free, and trying to translate things.

Everything is far cheaper here than in Canada. The only thing we found slightly more expensive is the gluten free bread, which was actually cheaper, at 10.49 lei ($3.56 CAD, $2.70 USD)...but it's quite a small loaf.

A pound of lean ground beef cost 8.20 lei ($2.79 CAD, $2.00 USD).

10 eggs cost 1.99 lei ($0.68 CAD, $0.50 US).

A basket of about 25 plums for 3.50 lei ($1.25 CAD, $0.90 USD). Yes, for the whole basket!

And so on. It's pretty cheap for us to eat here.

We made it back to the guesthouse around 4:30pm, and decided to just stay in. Ruth made a delicious thai red curry dish, and we watched a movie on the laptop. Later, another couple who is staying here came down to the common room. They are from the city of Sibiu, Romania which is our next destination. It was late though, so hopefully they'll still be around to talk to today because she spoke quite good English.

Raining again this morning, but we're going out anyhow to visit a castle!

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