California

California – the land of sugar and maple syrup. Not that we’re totally adverse to a mild version of the concept, but we’ll need de-toxing when we get back home.    They open a packet and pour it into a pan, add a variety of stuff from bottles and call it cooking.   Potatoes come in boxes, other vegetables come in cans,   flavourings come in bottles by the thousands and fruit and salads come already diced in vacuum packaging (wouldn't want to slave too much).  A 24" pizza is $9.99 but with a coupon (which you could be killed for) is $5.   Sunday is coupon day in the paper and people walk around the supermarket with a 120 ml thick pile of coupons in their mits (unbelievable).  The checkout staff really have to work for their money here and speed is of the essence.  No-one likes to wait in line. 

You can buy meat in Target, liquor in the pharmacy, guns in K-mart, lotto tickets at the donut store and hot soup at the grocery store.  The bank doesn’t cash change – you have to go to a supermarket to do that in the machine and they take 10%.  We can take cash out of a credit card at the ATM but in the bank we need our passport for ID to do the same thing. 

Did manage to find the most amazing designer outlet complex you could ever imagine.  It makes all our DFOs combined look like a local coffee shop. It's huge and it has a movie theatre complex attached to it.

 Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, is their big shopping day (equal to our Boxing Day sales) and they really discount stuff!!!  People camp out all night and the shops open at 4.00 am.