Spain 2016 - found a Saturday market.

Yesterday I heard a woman asking about the location of a Saturday market that her friend had told her was just over the bridge in Portugal. The person she was asking didn't know anything about it but it was just enough incentive for us to cross the river into Portugal this morning to take a look. The first indication of a market was a traffic jam and then cars parked beside the road and in fields near Castro Marim, the first little village after you come off the motorway.
We parked and walked into bedlam. We discussed tonight, over dinner, the difference between this market and the one we experienced every Saturday in Ceret, France, last year. In Ceret there was a sense of order. The streets were closed of and the vendors were on the sidewalk leaving the road for the pedestrians. There was little yelling, vendors would offer samples but reach out and speak intimately to get your attention. There was some jostling but mostly polite, edging through crowds and lining up at stalls. Here there was no sense of order, some tarps over stalls reached right across the street and to get through you had to walk through their wears, some were just a table in the middle of the roadway. There was lots of yelling in Portuguese, Spanish and English. It felt aggressive and people were also a bit aggressive in pushing their way through. Stalls were set up haphazardly resulting in some areas with one central aisle and others with three. Vendors yelled out the prices of their products and would do that when halfway through a transaction with a customer. It was great fun!

I parked in a field after dropping off Mum and Dad and looking up saw this above the market.

Bridge from Spain to Portugal.

This Crusader sculpture is in the centre of the roundabout going into Castro Marim (He looks like a pencil sketch)

We have been a little disappointed by the cheese selection in the supermarkets so were happy to see some cheese stalls here.

I loved a multilevel woven basket but couldn't figure out how to get it home.

Salt fish. Dad wants to try it. Mum and I have no interest. He may need to find it on a menu as we are not going to try buying it and cooking it.

Sheep milk cheese. We expected this to be mild but were given a free taste and it is hard and quite strongly flavoured. 3 for 5 Euros but we paid 2 Euro for 1.

Huge radishes! We bought a bunch of the normal, little round ones but next time I am going to get one of these and roast it in olive oil and herbs.

Makes me want to start gardening. If I had been able to find a basil plant I would have bought it. Being here for another 6 weeks it would have grown and we could have had fresh basil.

A lemon tree or a orange tree costs 20 Euro. I would love to be able to grow one of those at home.

One truck just had huge bags of onions or potatoes. George would have been tempted. He loved the big, cheap, bags of stuff.

Eavesdropping paid of and I think that this will become part of our weekly routine. We didn't walk right in to the thick of things this time but I will do next time. It looked like the rest was clothing but I would like to check.