london on a 1-star budget

before we came here, we were warned numerous times that london is one of the most expensive places in the world to live. essentially, the guideline we were given is that everything costs the same as it does in toronto, except it's in pounds, not dollars. for example, if milk costs $5 in toronto (for 4L), it'll cost £5 for the same in london. so we just prepared ourselves and tried to convince ourselves not to do the instinctive conversion calculations when buying stuff.

we were somewhat surprised to find that stuff is actually not as expensive as we would have thought. it's defo not cheap. but it is possible to get some decent stuff on a reasonable budget.

we visited a grocery store called waitrose in a plaza near where we're staying yesterday, just to check things out. we found a lot of things comparable in price to toronto - yes, even after we converted back to CAD. for example, shampoo (herbal essences for those who are keeping track) was £1.64, which works out to about $3. this was odd since waitrose seemed to be a more upscale type of supermarket. now, this wasn't true for everything. toothpaste was about £1.13, which works out to $2 and is on the pricey side for toothpaste.

(this was also somewhat to our dismay because we realized that we didn't necessarily have to bring some stuff with us in an attempt to save money. this would have saved us some extra weight - see previous post)

groceries (such as vegetables) were a mixed bag, with some items more expensive and other items about the same. same goes for meat. we found chicken drumsticks to be the cheapest kind of meat, followed closely by ground beef (20% fat).

we moved onto a tesco express for more price research. for the most part, tesco was cheaper than waitrose for a number things. we bought a 2L bottle of coke for £1. granted, it was on sale, but that's still not that bad. they also have this sandwich meal deal where you get a pre-made sandwich from a selection of different varieties (e.g. ploughman's, tuna and corn, chicken and bacon, egg and cress), a bag of chips (crisps here), and a bottle of water for £2. that's a full lunch for under $4 - we don't remember seeing that anywhere in canada.

today we visited a sainsbury's in the area. here's a rundown of our shopping list (conversion to CAD is using an exchange rate of approximately $1.83:£1) :

+ loaf of bread =45p ($0.85)
+ a jar of jam = 38p ($0.70)
+ two 1L boxes of juice = £1.50 (~$2.75)
+ a pint of milk = 45p (mainly for tea for caspian, as there is no lactose-free milk for teresa)
+ 1kg of sugar = £1.05 ($1.92)
+ jar of pasta sauce = 99p ($1.85)
+ 720g chicken thighs & drumsticks (bone in, skin on) = £2 ($3.66)
+ mushrooms = 59p ($1.08)
+ 3 peppers (1 of each colour) = £1.58 ($2.89 - this was our splurge item)

our total bill was £8.99 (approx. $16.45). we later picked up some bananas and a pack of spaghetti at tesco. we're going to explore the kitchen facilities here tonight!