L'épicerie la Mecque - Carrefour!!

After pondering what to blog next, Mike has requested that I make mention of the experience that is Carrefour.  Carrefour has almost become a hallowed institution in our home spoken in hushed tones and silent awe.  We attend Carrefour more than we attend church and make almost as many offerings to Carrefour's plate as it makes to ours.  It holds the key to our existence in Lyon.  What is this mighty marvel that commands our time and effort....our grocery store.  Don't mock our devotion...it is real and it is deep.  We are converts to the Carrefour.

I have made mention to this mammoth grocery store in previous posts because I have never in my life been to a grocery that was so enormous!  It is easily three times the size of any Super WalMart that I have ever been to.   Usually going to the grocery was something that I dreaded back in the U.S. but I have found that going to the Carrefour is very fun and sometimes the adventure of my day.  The grocery is inside a shopping mall so when you pop over to the grocery store you may just happen into a store or two selling the latest frocks, pick up a new lipstick, try on some cute shoes or buy a baguette for dinner.  It is a wonderland of fun!! 

Here are a few pictures to prove that this mythical land exists:

No, Justin isn't really here, but I had to put in this picture of him.  While he was here he reminded me that in the first five days of his visit, we had been to the Carrefour four times.  One other thing that you can see from this picture is the stall for the carts in the background.  In order to get a cart, you have to put a Euro into a slot that releases a chain freeing your cart.  When you are finished with the cart, you return it to the stall and when you hook the cart back up, your coin is released.  I have never, not even once, seen a cart that was left next to an empty parking spot nor a clerk whose job it is to corral stray and abandoned carts.  This is something we definitely need to adopt back home.

Maybe this little lovely is the reason going to the grocery is so much fun.  When you enter the grocery you can choose to scan your groceries as you go and then go through an express checkout OR you can choose to stand in the always long lines for a real live person.  I choose the impersonal and automated fast checkout thank you very much.  I have no need for human interaction...I am a ROBOT.

This entire aisle contains your prepackaged choices for cheese.  Just the prepackaged cheese, my friend.  I am a little scared of this aisle but I do make one stop in here to pick up the Gouda cheese that Mike feeds the dogs every night after dinner.  The dog's over-processed American cheese will never taste the same when they return back to the country of their birth and their "old ways".   Just in case you are wondering....they have not one slice or shred of cheddar or colby jack.  That is an American thing. 

THIS is the Cave a Fromage - The Cheese Cave (and this is only a fourth of it, but I felt very SPY like sneaking around for photos so it is the best I can do)!!  I used to avoid this and other very specialized "CAVES" that dot the Carrefour but I have come to find the one jewel that I have been brave enough to try....fresh Italian mozzarella.  Folks I never knew such amazing mozzarella cheese existed.   I will always buy our mozzarella from the CAVE.   When I get braver, I may try something else!   

This is the Poissonnerie - fresh fish section.  Since I have absolutely no idea how to cook fresh fish, I never find myself here but right next to the poissonnerie is a fresh sushi kiosk where people make sushi to order or prepare things for the case.  I have had the sushi from the kiosk and it was very yum!

Okay every grocery has a bakery, but in the Etats-Unis we buy one baguette at a time.  Here they come in bulk and while you can buy one, that is weak, and who eats just ONE French baguette anyways?  Not the French....they buy them in bulk (10-12 in a bag - I have never purchased in bulk as I buy my baguette from my local boulangerie and one at a time).  Out of frame was the pallet of Nuttella.  No need to stock that bad boy, just pull it off the pallet!

You think I lie about the size....this is a picture down the main aisle.  Can you see the end?  No....and neither could you if you were standing in the store.

This is HALF of the yogurt aisle.  Enough said.

Not featured in the grocery photos just to name a few departments:  Auto department, Electronics department, Home Appliances, Cafe, Pharmacy, Travel Department, Flower Shop and frankly many others.  These two photos are of the mall outside the Carrefour.  I have found my way down these corridors many times.  Ask Mike.

Can a mall inspire such awe?  Perhaps not, but it's a fun place to go if you have a few hours to kill while you are in France.