esselunga

what an experience. seriously. supermarkets in the u.s. are NOTHING compared to italy. pure madness. it is going to be hard to explain the immense cultural immersion it actually was- but i'll try. monday we went to esselunga, the supermarket in florence. mistake number one: we went at 6:30. so did everyone and their mom. crazy crowded and we got separated pretty much as soon as we entered. so we did our best and trekked around the story yelling to each other about how many apples and which kind of bread to get. cheese. cheese is so difficult to figure out. i don't know why. some is like 15 euro and some is 2 and we want to go cheap but is it bad cheese? language barriers galore. and lauren and i were trying to get an even amount of food since we were splitting it all. peanut butter. i crave it sooo hard. i'm not even that huge of a peanut butter fan i think i just want it because i can't have it. but we found it. every aisle we went down got more overwhelming and there were several points of the trip where one or more of us were at the brink of tears. however we did it. we made it out. lauren and i ended up spending almost exactly 30 euros each. and we got tons of food. i also had a solely italian conversation with a worker about where the salad dressing was. it felt so good. it sounds dumb but it wasn't easy. and we did it. i'll tell you it was a joyful walk home. our only fault being that we bought "intimate feminine wash" instead of hand soap. oops. works the same. but man was it an experience.