Provisioning in Style - Bagatelle Mall of Mauritius

The market is absolutely great for freshies, but we were in need of some other staples … and a few treats. We've found a couple of small grocery stores in town ... a ShopRite and a Winners ... both within walking distance, but both tiny and lacking in stuff we wanted. We haven't quite decided if we'll stop in Reunion yet, but whether we do or don't is irrelevant since prices there are very high and we're better off provisioning here. We'd heard of the Bagatelle Mall of Mauritius, which is a bus ride away, and purportedly had two large hypermarkets. We decided to head out on a foraging expedition.  

Sure enough, the bus let us off right in front of a modern, rather large mall. We're talking Tommy Hilfilger, Ralph Lauren, Hugo Boss, QuikSilver and a multitude of other high end stores we weren't interested in, plus two hypermarkets and veggie store. We walked through MonoPrix first ... okay, but not great. We checked out the other grocery store next, Intermart, and it had pretty much everything we wanted at reasonable prices. It was bustling with people. The aisles were jammed and the check-out queues were long.

Like most modern malls, Bagatelle had a large food court as well as some nice restaurants. We opted for lunch before shopping for three reasons. First, it's always better to shop on a full stomach. Second, it was lunchtime and we were hungry. Third, the name of the restaurant we chose was called The Flying Dodo Brewing Company. How could we resist?

We had a fine lunch with a Dodo beer and returned to Intermart. Since we were transporting all of our provisions in shopping bags and backpacks and needed to be able to carry it all, we were quite conscious of how much we could buy. We opted to take a small shopping cart and when it was full, we called it quits. We just managed to fit all of our purchases in the bags we had. We tromped back to the bus station laden down like mules, rode a jam-packed bus back to Port Louis, and walked from the Victoria Square bus station back to the marina, sweating and lugging our groceries through the crowded streets. Back on Nine of Cups, we got it all unloaded and stowed. We'll head back one more time for a second load. This foraging stuff is hard work. Whew ... time for a beer.