Bastions of authenticity, supermarkets deserve a place on the traveler's must-see list.

Ilulissat, Greenland, is north of the Arctic Circle, an outpost at the edge of one of the world's largest and thickest glaciers. Getting there involved three plane rides and a ferry boat trip, so I was more than a little surprised at how normal and everyday it seemed. Walking through the sweet little fishing town, charmingly dotted with bright red and blue peaked-roof cottages, I had to keep reminding myself that I'd traveled nearly to the world's roof. And then I happened upon a hulking, windowless royal blue building, the town's supermarket, which put things into sharp context. Inside, aisle after aisle was stacked with boxes of imported items from Denmark: Danish crackers, Danish cookies, Danish butter, and Danish cheese. In Ilulissat, the first moment it really sunk in that I was hundreds of miles from anywhere was when I realized that the groceries were too.

Before I started traveling, I hated supermarkets. They were too much a part of my suburban childhood, boring and prepackaged and way too familiar. When I began to travel, I yearned to explore places where people really got close and personal with their food, at street markets, salumerias, marchés, corner boulangeries, and carnicerias. A day or two into my very first trip to London, my friend Patricia invited me to come along with her to do the dinner shopping. How wonderful, I thought, as I imagined her haggling for fresh English strawberries with some Dickensian character at the corner fruit market. I was completely devastated when I learned we were going to Marks and Spencer. But then, as we roamed the air-conditioned aisles of the venerable British institution, Patricia nearly lost her wide-eyed friend in the largest supermarket section devoted to tea that this American had ever seen.

Now, I always put a supermarket visit on my travel list. They may have started out American (the supermarket was invented in the U.S.A.), but when supermarkets move abroad, they change language, too. For a quick, instant immersion course in the life and culture of a place, there's nothing better than a half-hour spent pushing a cart, puzzling over unfamiliar junk food. Mind you, I still enjoy prowling open-air vegetable markets and old-fashioned butchers and bakers wherever I go. But the supermarket gives you a different type of traveler's take on a place, and it is an easier cultural "read." I think that's because street markets have so much activity going on at once—smells, vendors, personalities. Plus you must sometimes deal with the stressful intricacies of bargaining.