Day 7: Serious shopping day

November 12th, 2005

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We spent most of the day touring different parts of the region, mostly shopping and dinning.

One proof that the region is growing fast is that my last year GPS map is already outdated when driving on the Phoenix freeways. This is one of the regions that is smart enough to build the freeway road before develop communities, this gives enough room to plan ahead for future growth. I like their highway system, not too bad even in the commute hours. We were caught in the Friday PM traffic when we went to dinner, but it wasn’t too bad to drive on the freeway, the cars were still moving pretty fast, much better than NC.

Another reason that I like the region is that I can find all my favorite stores (IKEA, Fry’s electronics) locally. Phoenix IKEA is pretty new, this November is their one year anniversary, we wanted to buy a lot from the store but we cannot since we have no luggage spaces left. Fry’s is like Bay area’s Fry’s, twice as big as Bestbuy and plenty of gadgets that can keep me interested for about an hour.

Jane’s favorite store is an indoor market, a farmer’s market style marketplace but people selling all kinds of stuff include home decorations, cosmetics, accessories and souvenirs etc. This totally reminded me the market in China since most of the stuff are 100% made in China, and most importantly, the salesman is also Chinese. Jane was very pleased to find some accessories. But be aware, you need negotiation skills in the market place, the marked price is normally not what you ended up paying.

Entry Filed under: Travel