Sticker Shock

After exploring the hotel and grounds, we walked about 20 minutes down the street to where we had spotted a Subway during our taxi ride. The prices were reasonable there, no $5 footlongs, but the one we got was on sale for $7 and there's no sales tax. We tried to order two cups of water only to learn that water (not even bottled) was the same price as a Diet Coke. We passed on the water, thinking it was unnecessarily overpriced. Come to find out, this is completely normal around here. Water appears to be like gold and is expensive everywhere we go! Even at McDonald's, a cup of water is the same price as a drink from the soda fountain. Wow, now that is something to get used to! No more free water at restaurants.

After dinner we walked to a local grocery store. The sticker shock came in the first aisle when we saw a regular box of Teddy Grahams for $7.59. Seriously? I knew food was expensive, but this was crazy! We all know that I'm a super frugal shopper, so this was certainly a challenge for me. I quickly became thankful for the trail mix, Chex Mix, and other snacks (all of which I got with coupons for FREE) that I had stashed in my carry on bag for the trip. By the way, I saw Chex Mix for sale for $6.75 a bag. I told Steven I should have brought over my 30 free bags that I have in the pantry and sold those here! As we strolled up and down the aisles we continued to be amazed by the prices. We skipped over the $9.99 bottle of fruit juice and selected a gallon of water and a 6-pack of Diet Coke on sale. It took all I had in me to allow the $8.39 smallest jar of peanut butter into our cart, as pictures of two giant jars from Sam's Club for less than that floated in my head! We passed on the jelly and finally found a box of crackers that was under $5. My favorite sight in the store was a bag of chips with a printed price of 99 cents and a price tag placed over it for $3.19. Talk about a price markup!
$33.74 later, we left with a few carefully selected items to get us through breakfasts and lunches this week!