Funny question

Marguerite

Active Member
We've done the Purse thing ourselves, in spades. But first...

When we go shopping and need to buy lunch, I never (or rarely) actually buy fast food. Instead I'll buy some extra sliced ham or smoked salmon in the supermarket, and a tub of cream cheese spread. At the baker I'll buy fersh bread rolls still warm from the oven. At the greengrocer's I'll buy a lettuce and some tomatoes. Then in the car, or even down the road beside the river, we'll make our own fresh sandwiches, much fresher and from better ingredients, as well as cheaper, than in the supermarket.

Our cinema is in one end of the mall. Just up the mall is a popcorn stand with a bigger rtange, for less, in stronger bags, than at the cinema. Plus I always refill water bottles instead of buying them. I KNOW where the water has come from (my triple filter system).

But to our Purse qualifications - when we went to Greece as a family (before difficult child 3) we were on a tight budget. Our accommodation was paid for, breakfasts included. We were resigned to paying for dinner, but we scrounged for lunch. We'd go down to breakfast looking like typical tourists with our camera bag and my handbag, but the cameras were still on the bed in the hotel room. The camera bag LOOKED full of cameras, but was rally empty. When we arrived. At the buffet we would fill the kids up on boiled eggs, toast (we had bread supplied, you toasted it yourself), pound cake (huge yellow slabs of it) sliced meat, jam, sliced cheese, bacon, prosciutto and something that LOOKED like croissants but seemed to have been made with olive oil instead of butter. Chewy, not flaky.
So while husband did his best to make the kids eat until they were full to bursting, I would quickly make sandwiches, wrap them in napkins or paper towel (stuffed into the camera bag in our room before we headed for breakfast) and stow it all into the camera bag. Sandwiches, boiled eggs, slabs of cake, then plenty of fruit pieces. Then husband & I would stuff ourselves.
After that we would go out on our daily tour or wherever, and when the kids got hungry we'd pull out the sandwich du jour and feed them. The aim was to keep the kids fed (because a fed kid is a non-whiny kid) and any leftover food, husband & I would eat. But we did our utmost to NOT buy lunch, or if we had to, to buy as little as possible. That way we could afford dinner.

Yes, we did take photos. After we left the hotel dining room we'd go back to our rooms and re-pack our bags, fitting in the cameras around all the food but also distributing more food, plus bottles of drink bought in a supermarket (cheaper) in my much larger backpack. Taking the backpack to the dining room would have been too obvious, but tourists always carry camera bags, so we had no trouble.

We've since taken the "make your own picnic" routine even further - the kids now do it too, they will take only the bare essentials, and buy local ingredients to pad it all out. So on their honeymoon difficult child 1 & daughter in law would take a basket with picnic blanket and salt shaker, plus a couple of plastic champagne flutes, on the gourmet food trail. They'd buy fresh bread from the baker, go to a cheese factory for tastings and maybe buy a hunk of really good gourmet blue cheese, get a half-bottle of wine from the boutique vineyard, maybe buy a punnet of fresh strawberries - then go have a budget gourmet picnic on good local produce, sitting by the side of a country road. It's the best way to experience the country while on holidays!

Marg
 
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