[Europe Trip] On food

There was nothing special to eat in London and its surrounding areas. My favourite shop was Pret A Manger, a chain shops that could be easily found in the cities. It's like a McDonalds in Singapore, you'll bump into one every few kilometres, sometimes from one branch you can already see another branch. They claimed to sell healthy and environment friendly food: various sandwiches, pastries, snacks and cakes.

Another popular chain in London was of course Marks & Spencer. They had specialized stores selling only food-related stuff. They even sold whole chicken and other meats. Also ready-to-eat food products, all sorts of salads and cakes and beverages and snacks. It's not that easy to find a Marks & Spencer department store, but M&S food stores were aplenty.

Italian food that I targeted to try out in Italy were pasta, pizza, risotto, lasagna and gelato. Mission was accomplished! Outstanding result: risotto and gelato. Their pasta, pizza and lasagna were so-so. Or was it because I didn't buy them from restaurants? Hmm... Some shops sell their pizza and pastry by the kilos. So I really had no idea how much I would have to pay until they served the food.

For pizza, they normally did not mix the toppings. It's pizza with only salami, pizza with only tuna, pizza with only olives. When they mix it's just a few toppings and there're still some bare patches with no toppings at all. I think I still like pizza hut's pizzas better.

I love Italian gelato. The average price was €1 per scoop. Some vendors sold it at €2 for 2 scoops so it's about the same and you got the reason to eat more ;) we ate gelato almost every day when we were in Italy. There were so many flavours to choose we're spoilt of choice.. We just couldn't get enough of gelato. Yum yum.

In popular tourist haunts in Rome, it was usually easy to spot this small car that looked exactly like a box. Once it's open for business, it looked like a normal snack stalls selling overpriced gelato, sandwiches and drinks. Gelato was sold for €4 per scoop here.

In Nice, there were quite a number of chinese fast food restaurant. They're commonly sold as separate dishes to share, for example soy sauce chicken and sweet & sour fish fillet. Extremely expensive when compared to Singapore's food, but so were other food. The most affordable ones were fried rice and fried noodles, €3 or less per plate. They also sold snacks and cakes.

Most cafes and restaurants in Italy and France put their outdoor seats facing the street. So I guess to talk face to face you have to sit inside, not outside the restaurant. Maybe people there enjoyed people-watching so much? It did look like they're watching a performance taking place on the street.
Most common food found all over Europe was of course sandwich. All sorts of them. In fact I got tired at eating sandwiches, fried rice from chinese fast food restaurant was always a welcome break. But I really could not enjoy eating baguette, except when it's heated until it's crispy. Even the hotdog we bought in Paris was translated into sausages sitting on a loaf of baguette.

Another thing, wine was really cheap in Europe. Since we are a mere social drinker, we didn't really take advantage of the opportunity of buying wine at cheaper price than water. Even orange juice was cheaper than water, I couldn't believe that. Evian water was so common in France it's like Aqua in Indonesia.