Sales continued …

Now you may remember my post on Boxing Day about the sales: I got it quite wrong, I presume, since my wife, my son and I hit the Boxing Day Sales in Central London and the crowds were just unbelievable , not to mention the queues at the tills. And obviously it was I who had to join the queue to pay, while my wife and my son were happily browsing …

Today my wife and I took our annual shopping trip to Bicester Village, an outdoor outlet mall in rural Oxfordshire, to pick up some more bargains and post-Christmas presents… and again we were not the only ones having had the idea (see my photo below): 25 minutes queuing to get into Gucci, then 40 minutes more queuing to pay, (yes, still in Gucci) and by mid-afternoon there were queues to get into most of the big designer’s outlets.

Like already in Central London on Boxing Day, today in Bicester there were not only the locals shopping, but also tourists (mostly Asian) by the coach load, dragging along big suitcases and filling them with their newly acquired possessions.

Bicester Village has in recent years become a major tourist attraction, with visitor numbers to the 160 boutiques exceeding now 7 million annually, a third of which are foreigners, and the mall hence being among the top destinations for foreign visitors to the U.K.. The Chinese are said to represent a fair share of the international crowd and Bicester Village is rumoured to be as popular with the Chinese as Buckingham Palace.

As far as I am concerned, I am done with sales for the next 12 months … and queues!