I'm a foodie, so for me food places are fun. I can get lost in supermarkets, farmer's markets, even the tiny little gourmet shop. My husband doesn't get it, but I know there's lots of you who do.
Anyway, so this was our second trip to Buenos Aires in 2 months and once again, I was back in the grocery store.
(Each trip we've done has been to research the information we will be needing to move there)
So, I spent some time comparing prices. While there are some things that are approximately the same as we pay in the U.S., such as a small round of Crottin, a french style semi-ripened goat cheese (about $5 - 6U.S.) The majority of products I found were substantially less. And for someone who will be living on U.S. Dollars or even Euros, that's a major plus.
I have an easy product to illustrate what I'm talking about. We just returned from Buenos Aires and I had to go food shopping to restock the fridge. Okay, let's not start with the meats, because it's pretty well known already that Argentina has amazing beef that's not super cheap. Let's head straight to the vegetable section.
I bought a bag of fresh green beans at my local Publix in Miami. The price - $3.99/pound. That bag of green beans cost me almost $5.00 - and they were the worst green beans I had ever had!! My tomatoes weren't much better. Or cheaper! I don't know what happened to the prices or the quality while I was gone. Maybe it was Hurricane Wilma, I don't know. But what I do know is that the veggies in the store SUCKED!
Flashback to Buenos Aires. Carrefour - a French hypermarket. When you go to the vegetable section, they have all kinds of fresh salad mixes - even some great organic ones. And they have the nicest looking green beans and tomatoes. And guess what!...they actually have some flavor! And the price? Well, for me, on my 3 - 1 USD Peso exchange, they were cheap. Really cheap! Something like .50 cents a pound!!!! Talk about cheap...and yummy!
Okay, back to the local Publix. I get to the checkout counter and the cashier starts ringing everything up. I start to get the shakes like a junkie who's been told the price of her fix just went up! So, she finishes and I'm looking at maybe 8 plastic bags of groceries, including some cat litter a few expensive goodies. The total??!!! $160.00 URGHHHHH!!!! Do you know how it killed me to spend that? For the same amount of food in In Buenos Aires, I would have paid approximately $50.00 US.
Once again, though, as I always like to say...if you can live there on dollars or euros, you are going to live very comfortably. If you try to live on pesos, well that's another story altogether.
I could go on and on but I'll save the rest for future posts. 'll be talking more about the prices of products, the cost of living, etc. for expats so stay tuned!
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