Eh! You close at what time….?

Perth has an amazing array of shops to choose from. The downtown area commonly referred to locally as the CBD (Central Business District) in some areas reminds me of downtown Vancouver and Robson St and other areas remind me of downtown Burlingame in the San Francisco Bay Area. There is everything from your big recognizable names – Gucci, Prada, Hugo Boss to North Face and Target along with local upscale designers, Chemists (Pharmacists), The Body Shop etc. Basically most stores you have seen or visited in a typical mall or shopping area in a major city in the US are here. I even saw a Bobbi Brown store today which means I can finally get that lipstick replaced as I did not have time to go to Nordstrom before I left.

That’s the great news the bad news is the shopping hours….

Yesterday I got kicked out of Woolworths. Woolworths in case you don’t know is a huge grocery chain store here. I would say it is a cross between Whole Foods, Safeway and Walgreens in that you have your higher end organic meats, fish, fruit and cheeses, the regular priced store brands and you can also get a mop, a notebook, some hangers and a rain coat all at the same location. So after a week of eating most of my meals out my body rebelled in a very unhappy way so I decided an intervention was needed so off to the stores I went.

First I hit Target for a skillet then I went over to Woolworth and since the wine is in a different section decided to get the wine first but spend too much time selecting it by which time the gate was coming down by time I checked out and took this picture.

Make sure you get all the booze on the first trip

I begged and the guard was kind enough to let me into the main part of the store where I engaged in my own version of Supermarket Sweeps – me running down each aisle trying to get what was on my list and throw it in the cart while trying to dodge the worker who was chasing me going “Ma’am we are closing you have to leave”. I would duck down an aisle and hide at the end and voila there he would show up following me again finally all but dragging me to the check out line – out of 9 items I got 6. By time I checked out and got out of the store with the metal gate coming down above my head it was around 5:10pm. That’s right!!

Many of the stores close daily at 5 or 6 pm – during the week Woolworths will stay open till 8/9pm but on the weekends closes at 5pm. On Sundays nothing opens before noon, well that’s not quite accurate – Target opens from 10am to 5pm on Sundays and till 6pm during the week. The “late” shopping day of the week is Friday so last Friday night when I got back into the city after work it was the first night of the week that stores were still open and I was able to get a pack of socks. This is a whole different lifestyle to get used to – imagine that just over a week ago I would leave the gym around 8 or 9pm and if I wanted something different for dinner would just hop to Safeway or Wholefoods then head home and cook it.