“Travel” Week 38-40
Days: 260-280
| Carrefour | 894 ARS (USD 9.16) |
Really went in for the junk food on this shopping trip with potato chips, cookies, and cereal on top of my fairly regular purchases of eggs, milk, steak, cheese and popcorn. No wonder I’ve been having trouble with my weight these past three weeks.
| Atomo | 300 |
| Vegetables (onion, carrot, celery, potatoes, tomato) | 230 |
| Total: | 530 ARS (USD 5.43) |
After the comfort food weekend, I decided to pivot with a big pot of vegetable soup. The Atomo lacks the selection of the Carrefour, but I can always count on it for deeply discounted butter.
| Produce | 350 ARS (USD 3.59) |
I seem to have forgotten to jot down my purchase in my notes, but I know I had to have gone out to buy something this day because after eating soup for two days, I ate salad for most of the rest of the week before subsisting on rice and chickpeas over the weekend. The number seems a bit high considering my average spend at the produce shop is about 200 pesos, but that is the difference between what I have in my pocket and what I picked up at the Western Union.
| Airbnb (31 days, July 18-Aug 18) | 221.24 USD |
| Carrefour | 1260 ARS (USD 12.92) |
Once again caving into my sweet tooth, I picked up dulce de leche, a package of medialunas from the bakery section and raisin bran.
| Wine and olive oil | 620 |
| Cherry tomatoes | 20 |
| Total: | 640 ARS (USD 6.56) |
It finally occurs to me that although the Chinese supermarket has a couple of reasonable priced bottles of wine, most of the items are slightly more expensive than Carrefour or Atomo (because they are rounded up to increments of 5). Though, they have a reasonable priced bottle of olive oil (180 pesos), so that was something.
| Laundry | 400 |
| Coffee beans | 800 |
| Carrefour Hypermarket | 1420 |
| Total: | 2620 ARS (USD 26.86) |
It must have been at least two months since I last had clothes professionally laundered, so even though I only wear jeans to go outside and I don’t go outside much, they were starting to get pretty grubby. One of the five cafes between my apartment and the Carrefour Hypermarket had a sign advertising retail sale of coffee beans, which turned out to be both more expensive and not as tasty as the Starbucks, so I won’t be patronizing that shop again. At the Carrefour, I bought AAA batteries for my scale, which despite being on sale, still cost me an arm and a leg. Having broken two of the three drinking glasses in the apartment (tipping over in the sink while doing dishes), I bought some new cheap and on sale glasses as well. Finally, because the Carrefour happened to have jalepenos in the produce section, I decided to make fajitas, salsa, refried beans, and burritos over the weekend. And, aha! I also forgot to note the produce run for tomatoes and onions, the cost of which is already included in the mystery shopping trip above. That is the problem of a reliable produce shop one block away, I can go and come back so fast I forget to write down what I spent.
| Atomo | 970 |
| Fruit and salad | 200 |
| Total: | 1170 ARS (USD 11.99) |
I went to the Atomo because I wanted wine, which averages 20 pesos cheaper per equivalent bottle in the Carrefour. I also discovered on this shopping trip that the dried beans are also notably cheaper (74-79 pesos a bag instead of 99). I picked up some steaks and chirizo as well. In the produce shop, I stocked up on grapefruit and mandarin oranges, which I have been eating a lot of the last few weeks since they seem to be the most “in season” of the fruits.
Despite the worse exchange rate, it appears my average daily spend during this period is just under 11 dollars, which is slightly better than the last post.
Running Total: 5369.42 USD (RMB 37,452.8)
Daily Average: 19.18 USD (RMB 133.8)