Can you name some big supermarket chains in Italy for me to look out for? We will be staying near San Remo. We don't speak Italian but discovered from our trips to France that one can get by in places like supermarkets where you can take as long as you want trying to work out what's in the products etc. Just call it shopping by phrase book. Going into smaller stores or shopping in markets is so much more difficult with limited language.

Thanks Buzzy

Some big Italian supermercato chains are: PAM ; Essalunga ; Unes; Gulliver; and Co-op. I prefer Pam as it has fresh fish section as well as deli, but don't know who is around San Remo, but its a big resort town, there must be several. Also there is a chain of small ones called Crea, sort of like bigger versions of 711.

Buzzy, I would imagine that you will find a supermarket around San Remo but my experience has been the supermarkets are located on the outskirts of cities/towns.

You might want to go to www.slowtrav.com if you are not familar with the way things are done in an Italian supermarket such as paying the 1 euro deposit for the grocery cart (returned when the cart is returned) bringing your own or paying for bags, not touching the produce (wear one of the supplied plastic gloves), putting the produce in a provided plastic bag, weighing the produce, printing out the label etc. All quite easy once you know what is expected.

I second the recommendation for slowtrav.com for info on supermarkets. I would have been sunk and made mistakes if I had not read that before I went.

I can add one more thing, if it hasn't been posted already. They don't want you to take pictures inside the store, at least not the one I went to in Rome! I got chewed out, nicely, in Italian, for doing this.

But if you make a mistake of some sort, just apologize and move on. Being awkward is just part of traveling.

I liked shopping in the Coop (pronounced like chicken coop, not co-operative). We found them scattered all over Italy. The Coop is very large and we were able to find everything we needed, including great deli food. I hung back and watched how the locals do it and managed very well there.

Hi WillTravel, if you really want to get chewed out just try touching any produce with your bare hands. I did that in a very small "supermarket" in the Dolomites and you would have thought I had caused WWIII to begin, LOL. Actually it is a wonder that my photograph was not taken by the local police.

There are supermarkets even in the hearts of all Italian cities/towns - they may be smaller than you're used to, but definitely there. And I've never been yelled at for not using the plastic gloves to pick out my own produce; sometimes I do, sometimes I don't (I find that with the gloves on it's even harder to open the !$#@# plastic bags!).

You can save money in supermarkets by bringing your own shopping bags - either cloth ones, or re-use plastic. Smaller shops will give you the bags for free, but they like it if you have your own (which is also more environmentally-friendly).

All stores, no matter the size, love it when you can give exact or close to exact change -somehow no one in Italy ever has enough change in the till!

best regards,
Deirdré Straughan

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There certainly are several Coop supermarkets in Sanremo. Oh, and it's actually pronounced 'ko-op', not 'coop'!

Coop...pronouniciation...I was corrected at least twice when I said Co-op...which was my natural inclination. I Coops in Umbertide and then in Burano and then in Venice. Maybe it's a regional thing?

Yes the main thing is to remember to weigh the fruit and veg. and put the price sticker on BEFORE you get to the checkout. There are scales near the fruit and veg. They don't weigh at the checkout.
If you forget the checkout girl may go back to where the scales are to weigh the produce or send you back. The girls are very obliging, but the line behind you can become a bit impatient!

Coop is great, I shop there all the time when in Italia. There shouldn't be a problem at all, San Remo is an international city that gets a lot of foreign tourists (Russians, English, etc). There are a lot of shopping options there, if not you can always go to nearby Ventimiglia or even back into France (Menton).

Perhaps the pronounciation of Coop is a regional thing. All my friends in NE Italy (Italians) pronounce it Coop.
And let me say again..at least in NE Italy..you do not touch the produce with your bare hands.

We found two Bllla markets in Venice, one on the Zattere and the other near Ca d'Oro. The owner of our flat made a bag on wheels available, that's what all the locals use. They park them in front, then pack them after they've gone through checkout and wheel them home. Of course, every square also had produce shops which also sold a variety of other items.