Shopping in France is an adventure! There are so many brands and different styles to get your head around. Quality of goods is generally very good plus you are not paying heavy import taxes for French goods that would apply in Australia. You can also claim back the VAT (like GST) on your purchases on your departure from the country.

Best buys are perfume, wine, spirits, sporting goods, brand name clothes, antiques.

See Time Out's guide to shopping in Paris

Grocery shopping is an adventure in itself. Hypermarkets in France are huge stores that combine supermarkets with department stores. Sort of like Woollies, Big W and Harvey Norman and liquor barn rolled into one. They can have more than 50 checkouts and offer a bewildering range of products. Hypermarkets might have an entire aisle devoted to one type of cheese like camembert, which is scary when you consider France produces over 200 different cheeses. There might be a couple of aisles just for red wine then a couple for beer and so on. Sensibly they allow you to run your party supplies through with the rest of the groceries instead of having to skulk over to the liquor store. Hypermarkets are really like a food theme park and are mostly found on the outskirts of towns and cities due to their vast size. The big names are Carrefour (world’s 2nd largest retailer after Wal Mart), Auchan, Casino, E LeClerc, Geant and Cora. Prices are comparable or in many cases better than Australia. Many people in southeast England take the ferry to Calais simply to do their grocery shopping as it is significantly cheaper than the UK and the food is better.

In smaller towns the main supermarket chain is Intermarche who have literally thousands of outlets around the country.

Sporting goods store Decathlon is like Super A Mart except bigger. They are usually clustered with hypermarkets on the outskirts of town and offer good deals on a huge range of sporting goods. Top quality skiing and cycling gear is significantly cheaper than in Australia. Billabong, Quicksilver and many other surf brands are manufactured under licence in France so can be quite a good bargain too.

Clothes shopping in France is obviously pretty interesting with all the famous fashion brands like Chanel, Vuitton, Hermes etc. All the major players have their own boutiques in the larger cities. Expect to pay through the nose.

The most famous department store in France is Galleries Lafayette which started in Paris in the 19th Centurty and has now expanded to the other large cities.

An interesting chain of stores is FNAC who specialise in books, music, audio gear and gifts etc. Its a bit of a French institution and probably not a bad bet for some gifts to take home.

Rugby and fashion comfortably rub shoulders in France. Former French international rugby legends Serge Blanco (Quinze Serge Blanco) and Franck Mesnel (Eden Park) have each opened their own men's clothing boutique chains. Image the Canterbury Shop getting a 'Queer Eye for the Straight Guy' makeover and that about sums it up. Probably a bit pooncy for most Aussie blokes taste, but they command a slavish devotion among the french rugby community and hangers on. These stores are particularly prevalent across the south. Any town with a team in the professional league will usually have one of each,

Outlet shopping in France is pretty good. Marques Avenue (marque means brand) started in the city of Troyes bringing toghether a huge range of brand outlet stores in one place. The formula was so successful that now they have a number of centres across France including Paris. Basically they are like huge shopping centres selling nothing but genuine branded gear at 30-50% off regular retail prices.

In France they use the European sizing based on the metric system whereas Australia is a mishmash of UK, US and European systems. Many clothing labels will have UK and US size equivalents listed, but a good idea is to calculate your European sizes before you go and put them into a note book or your mobile phone.

Check out this universal clothing size conversion site

Markets form a huge part of the French retail scene. Virtually very village, town and city neighbourhood has weekly markets. These can be general markets with food, clothing, bric a brac etc or highly specialised ones for things like antiques, flowers, gourmet food, farm produce etc. The south of France is where the market tradition remains strongest. Provence, Languedoc, Midi Pyrenees and Aquitaine regions offer an endless range of markets to choose from. You could spend your entire time in France just visiting markets and only scratch the surface.

France DIY is compiling a database of markets by town, day/season and speciality. This huge task will take a while.