When I travel I like to go to grocery stores. First, I am a sucker for bright packages and a store made up of the same stuff as my regular store but in different boxes is a bonus. Plus, when I travel, I look for local food. Wild blueberry sauce in Maine, different shapes of oysters or pasta.   The need for scale is distinct from the equally lush feel of a great small supplier, the gem of a bakery, the Lebanese corner store.   Big shops in Halifax, then Ontario, then the States respectively displayed greater variety and larger scale as my grocery store related travels extended. It is mightily impressed I am, then, both reading that some else suffers from the same disorder as I do and that the mother ship of all grocery stores has been located in the great state of New York:

They have a bigger kitchenware department than most actual department stores. Separate aisles for cat food and dog food. Organic dog food in the natural foods section. About 80 linear feet of freezer space for gourmet cheese, not counting the super-gourmet cheese counter with the honey-and-almond-drizzled chunks of Stilton. A tea aisle, with black tea on one side and green tea on the other.

I note simply for the record that Wegmans of Pittsford is also within spitting distance of the mother of all beer shops in the USA (I need only to quote one reviewer: "walking into Beers of the World is like walking into a dream") not to mention the birthplace of the white hot.

I am sure I can find a educational experience for the kids in the Rochester area this fall.