Going to foreign supermarkets is the best thing about holidays

We’re still a long way from returning to regular international travel, but for Natasha Preskey there is only one thing she cannot wait for - the holiday food shop

(Getty Images/Vetta)

“She’s come all the way from the UK and all she wants to do is go to Walmart!” my Louisianan mother-in-law is telling her husband about my holiday plans, with the half-amused, half-baffled tone of someone who’s just been introduced to an innocuous cousin of ET.

I am visiting my (now ex) boyfriend’s hometown near Dallas, Texas, in the USA for the first time, and the two of us are heading out for a third trip (that week) to the town’s equivalent of big Tesco. My ex laughs when I ask if we should walk the half-mile journey, as it’s so close by.

When we get there I wander through the cereal aisle like a 10-year-old, dazzled by primary colours and the promise of more sugar in a single bowl of ‘Donut O’s’ than my mum would let me have in an entire weekend as a child.  I spend at least 20 minutes opening and slamming freezer doors in a way that my post-pandemic brain would baulk at, marvelling at ice cream birthday cakes and mac-and-cheese-filled Cheetos and frozen egg and bacon waffle sandwiches.

I analyse the ‘candy’ aisle as if performing groundwork for a research paper, commenting on every tiny, nuanced variation of a product nestled between this bright, brash offering, and casting my mind back to the strait-laced Galaxy, Cadbury and Mars line-up at home. Which treats would feel most holiday to my colleagues upon my return?

Supermarkets are objectively a spectacle for the senses - a warehouse designed entirely to get you to want to eat things, and spend your money. But at home the supermarket is also synonymous with chores and monotony. Of course during the pandemic, floating leisurely through the Aldi on Old Kent Road has become a thrilling and decadent luxury, but the overriding feeling is the same - it’s just food shopping.

There’s something curious about identifying tiny differences in a sea of sameness

But when you’re on holiday, food shopping becomes something else altogether. Unfortunately the closest I’ve come to travelling in the last 12 months has been moving house (twice, thanks for asking) but even in the Before Times, when fun could mean something genuinely thrilling, like swimming in the ocean or kissing a stranger, going to someone else’s local supermarket, somewhere far away, was still one of my favourite things to do.

There’s something curious about identifying tiny differences in a sea of sameness. Of enjoying the thrill of little inconsistencies within something sufficiently nestled in your frame of reference that, in an alternate reality, you could imagine yourself living this life.

Like a childhood friend getting an unexpected makeover, or a familiar long-term partner telling an anecdote you realise you’ve never heard before.

In a supermarket on holiday there are new layouts, new smells, new deli counters, and an A-Z of new products and foods (hopefully with exciting untranslatable labels). Unlike in a restaurant or at tourist hotspots, there is no pressure to spend money or turn your table. You can spend as much or little time as you like wandering the aisles.

What are you going to buy? Ingredients to try something you’ve never eaten before? More crisps, beer and tiny salty olives to eat by the pool or over a long lunch that isn’t hemmed in by work? Supermarkets on holiday have the capacity to remind us of the joy and delight of food, the tastes and smells and sensory joy that a good meal, with wonderful company and leisurely time can conjure up.

And rather than leaving me sick of trolleys, frozen food and robotic beeping, months of my local supermarket being the only indoor public space we’re regularly allowed to spend time in has made me love them even more not resist wanting to visit when I’m next allowed further afield.

Because, in all honesty, when, and if, I next get on a plane, I’ll be looking forward to traipsing around under those harsh fluorescent lights as much as lounging by the pool.