Shopping in San Diego

Report by Daniel H.

Las Americas

Even though San Diego is one of the most expensive cities in the United States, it also offers some attractive and affordable places to go shopping. While most shops in Downtown San Diego offer expensive luxury products, there is a place very close to the Mexican border called “Las Americas” which is a huge premium outlet mall. It offers about 125 outlet stores of brands like Adidas, Nike, Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren and many more. If you want to go there just make sure not to miss the exit of the highway because you otherwise quickly end up being in Mexico.  If you do, so you better have your passport with you.

Fashion Valley Mall

Another nice but more expensive place is the Fashion Valley Mall which is located in the center of San Diego. Fashion Valley offers San Diego’s finest collection of about 200 stores in a beautiful outdoor shopping center. There you can find Abercrombie & Fitch, American Apparel, Apple, Gucci, H&M and many more.

Vons

For your daily shopping of groceries and household articles I personally recommend VONS, which is a southern California supermarket chain. It offers a large supply of articles of high quality and especially for European people VONS also offers quality cheese and sausage.  VONS might not be as cheap as Walmart or other stores but instead you get good quality and nearly everything you need for your daily life. That’s the reason for our self-created slogan “All at vons”.

Most shops are open seven days a week and a lot of them from about 8am till even 10pm. It’s not even a problem to go shopping on a Sunday. You need to know that most prices are displayed without sales tax. This means that everything you see in a store will be about 8 percent more when it comes to paying due to the additional sales tax.