Shopping 'round the world made easy.

Last year when I was in Amsterdam, my friend Frank took me all around and made my stay fantastic. As a thank you, before I left, I got him a season of Seinfeld on DVD. Of course, I needed to make sure that the DVDs were European-compatible, and I didn't want to pay an arm and a leg for shipping. So, I got the CD from Amazon's UK website.

This week, one of my French sisters, Pascale, sent me her first-ever email (I am so proud to be the premiere recipient) and told me that they were going to have a party in October to celebrate my French parents, Jacqueline & Pierre's 50th wedding anniversary. Unfortunately, I cannot go to the party, but I wanted to send a gift. Pascale said I could send something to her house and she'd wrap it and take it to the party with her. So, I went shopping at Amazon's French website and bought a great Emile Henry teapot (theiere, en francais), with free shipping due to the price of the item.

Considering that last year the postal service did away with surface mail shipping, buying from Amazon's European sites (they also have one for Germany) is a great bargain. In fact, if you cannot navigate the language for the foreign sites, the UK site still ships to continental Europe for great rates.