PACK A PICNIC TO SAVE DOUGH IN EUROPE.
If you want to eat like a local — enjoying tasty local specialties economically — go on a picnic.
While I’m the first to admit that restaurant meals are an important aspect of any culture, in Europe I picnic almost daily. This is not solely for budgetary reasons. It’s fun to dive into a marketplace and deal with locals in the corner grocery or market. And Europeans are great picnickers. Many picnics become potlucks, resulting in new friends, as well as full stomachs.
To busy sightseers, restaurants can be time-consuming and frustrating. After waiting to be served, tangling with a menu and consuming a budget-threatening meal, you walk away feeling unsatisfied, knowing your money could have done much more for your stomach if you had invested it in a picnic instead.
To bolster your budget, I recommend picnic dinners every few nights. At home, we save time and money by raiding the refrigerator to assemble a pickup dinner. In Europe, rather than raiding the fridge, raid the corner deli, bakery or supermarket.
If your hotelier posts signs prohibiting picnicking in rooms (most likely in France), you’ll easily be able to find plenty of other atmospheric places to eat. But if you picnic in your room anyway, be discreet and toss your garbage in a public waste receptacle.
While I like to frequent local bakeries and outdoor markets, American-style supermarkets are a good alternative. Here are some tips on how to navigate them:
Ready-made food: Many supermarkets offer cheap packaged sandwiches, while others have deli counters where you can get a sandwich made to order — just point to what you want. Most supermarkets offer a good selection of freshly prepared quiche, fried chicken and fish, all for takeout.
Produce: It’s a cinch to buy a tiny amount of fruit or vegetables. Many have an easy pushbutton pricing system: Put the banana on the scale, push the picture of a banana (or enter the banana bin number), and a sticky price tag prints out. You could weigh and sticker a single grape.
In Spain and Italy, if there is no one to serve you, the store provides disposable plastic gloves for you to wear while picking out your produce (a bare hand is a no-no).
Drinks: Milk in the dairy section is always cheap. Be sure it’s normal drinking milk. Strange white-liquid dairy products in look-alike milk cartons abound.
Or look on the (unrefrigerated) shelves for “long life” milk. This milk — which requires no refrigeration until it’s opened — will never go bad … or taste good.
European yogurt is delicious and you can drink it right out of its container. Fruit juice comes in handy litre boxes (look for “100 per cent juice” or “no sugar” to avoid Kool-Aid clones). Buy cheap by the litre, and use a reusable half-litre plastic mineral-water bottle (usually found next to the soft drinks) to store what you can’t comfortably drink in one sitting.
If it’s hot outside, don’t expect the soft drinks, beer, or wine to be chilled — most supermarkets sell these at room temperature.
Sweets: To satisfy your sweet tooth (or stock up on gifts for the folks back home), check out the dessert and candy section. European-style “biscuits” (cookies) are usually a good value, as are candy bars that might cost twice as much at airport gift shops.
Supermarket etiquette: Bring your own shopping bag or use your empty day pack, or expect to pay extra for the store’s plastic bags.
There is nothing secondclass about using a supermarket for a picnic. A few special touches will even make your budget meal a first-class affair. In a park in Paris, on a Norwegian ferry, high in the Alps, at an autobahn rest stop, on your convent rooftop or in your hotel room, picnicking is the budget traveller’s key to cheap and local eating.