Extreme Shopping: Morrisons Edition

The one sometimes simple way to save money? Buy your own food. In Central London, there are about three supermarket chains that I have found: Tesco, Sainsbury's, and M&S. These are great for having your basics but considering, they are in central London, they are quite small. On a whim, we decided to wander a little bit outside of central London after our trip to Portobello Market. As I mentioned in my last post, we ended up finding a shopping mall and inside was a HUGE grocery store called Morrisons. It was so exciting because so far, everything has been so tiny and all we had to do was wander down the isles and get everything we need. The store was at least 5-10 times bigger than all of the grocery shops nearby our residence and bigger than most in the states most likely since all forms of alcohol are sold within the supermarkets adding isles. Since we were fairly far from Kings Cross, we only got a few things that we would need now and we planned on going to a location closer to home.

On Tuesday, we all went to the closest Morrisons in Camden about 2 miles away. For starters, in order to get a shopping cart, you need to put a pound into the cart in order to unlock it, when I initially saw it, I thought we had to pay, but thankfully you get it back once you lock the cart back up again. Maybe cart stealing is an issue here? Who knows. Ally and I got there before everyone else so we just started looking around produce which was surprisingly not to expensive. Without leaving one isle, we had a full cart and need a reality of check. Additionally, food expires much sooner so we had to put that into consideration with selecting our food. Once the rest of the group arrived, we were able to see what our roommates got and figure out what we were going to share and what we were buying for ourselves. Surprisingly enough with all of the food I bought, I spent no more than £40 pounds on food for myself and my half of everything we were going to share.

Here's the real struggle, we now had all of this GREAT food, but we now had to get back to our residence... during peak travel. And we had to walk a bit to the station as well. That was the first struggle and it didn't help that Morrisa and I got diet coke on sale. Whoops. Once we were on the tube, it was super crowded and we still had to hold everything and manage to hold onto a bar so we didn't die when we stopped and started at each station. By the time we got there, we sat for a few just to rest our arms. At that point, we still forgot we had a long way to go. Kings Cross is a MASSIVE tube station with 6 lines (the most of any station) as well as all of the traffic from Kings Cross and St. Pancras national and international rail. Once we finally got back, we were cold, everyones hands were purple from loosing circulation, and we just wanted to make our dinner so we felt like there was some reward for this. On the other hand, we at least have enough to last 1-2 weeks and all of the other essentials that we did not bring when we first landed.

Long story short, her are a few lessons we learned:
1. If you plan on grocery shopping without a car and more than 2 bags, get a cab. They fit up to 5 people and can be cheap when the cost is split amongst passengers.
2. Do not be that annoying person on the tube with a ton of things during peak hours. You will be ready to kill yourself as others around you will want to as well, or at least they will be able to laugh.
3. A hungry shopper + walking = a broken shopper

And if you really cannot figure that out, you will probably just end up looking like this...