Market Manila

A good holiday means that every breakfast feels like a Sunday breakfast. You aren’t constantly on the run, you aren’t harried and flustered. Or at least you aren’t most of the time. A party of 3, which includes a 10 year old just on the cusp of her growth spurt and thus requiring a good 10-12 hours of sleep to avoid grumpiness is extremely difficult to get organized by 9 or 10 am in the morning. Thus the languid pace of our trip… I often got out to the markets, shopped and photographed, walked back to the apartment and ate breakfast before any stirring occurred. Our first morning in Barcelona, however, we were still a bit jet-lagged and rose at 730am, totally famished… we donned jackets and headed out the door to catch the opening of La Boqueria and to find something to eat…

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Trolling the seafood section of a non-tropical market is always filled with discovery and surprise. Frankly, I have always felt that “cold countries” eat fish fillets and that’s about it. It’s an unfair view and I know it. I guess too many fish and chips tales and TV and movie stereotypes have had their effect. Hitting the seafood section of La Boqueria was an extremely interesting experience. The variety was pretty good and I was somewhat hard-pressed to identify some of the things on offer. What was almost as striking as the seafood itself was the way they were beautifully displayed…

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Part of the rationale for renting an apartment in Barcelona was to save over 50% on exhorbitant hotel rates (say USD450 for a triple in the neighborhood we wanted) and to be able to take advantage of food from the nearby market. Of course no one wants to cook constantly during a busy trip but the option of eating what you want when you want to is nevertheless attractive. We found a cozy two-bedroom apartment in a three story walk-up on Portaferissa Street just a few minutes walk from La Boqueria. Major downside were the incredibly narrow stairs and no porters! We prepared 3-4 of our dinners there as the prospect of a super late dinners with the Kid and after a full day of sightseeing wasn’t too appealing… Our first dinner was simple yet satisfying. First a salad of mixed greens with some sliced jamon and a balsamic vinaigrette dressing…

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What was particularly impressive about La Boqueria besides the tremendous variety and quality of produce and foodstuff that you would generally see in any good market around the world, was the abundance of all the unusual or special stuff that is common to local cuisine or that gourmands generally view to be among the rarer or more sought after delicacies, wherever they are from. Spain has a tremendous agricultural underpinning and its weather and geography make it a wonderful place for several types of crops. One of the largest producers of olives, the selection of fresh or cured olives in the market was mind-boggling. I was never a great olive fan but how can you NOT sample several different types of lives when there are so many on display? Throughout our whole trip, the best revelation olive wise was a very minimally treated olive that was essentially the fruit and a bit of brine, that’s it. It was green, firm and flavorful without being overly salty…absolutely delicious.

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The Mercat San Josep or better known as “La Boqueria” in Barcelona was absolutely fantastic! Located on La Rambla (or Las Ramblas or Les Rambles, confused folk those Catalans…) in the Raval District (next to the gothic District), it has certainly earned a place in my list of “Top 3″ favorite markets around the world. Along with the Union Square Market in New York and the Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne, La Boqueria took about 5 seconds to cast its spell on Marketman. There are lots of terrific and charming markets around the globe that I have seen, and many that I have not, but a few markets standout as places I would have no problem living next to and exploring again and again. I am particularly fond of small neighborhood markets like those in Paris, San Francisco and Bangkok but when you need variety, a large city market is a must! There was so much hype about La Boqueria that I was worried it would be a bit of a letdown. The first apartment we reserved in Barcelona was literally above the entrance to the market on the left side (in case you have been there). Unfortunately, that fell through and we booked another apartment around the corner, about 3 minutes walk from the market…close enough indeed.

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Barcelona, Florence and Rome, here we come! A quick post on mode of transport while in Europe. After the butt-numbing 13 hour flight on KLM to Amsterdam…the thought of more airtime really weighed heavily on our psyche. So here is the dreamy Marketman post on how to get around the continent with style. From Amsterdam to Barcelona, rent this fantastic silver BMW motorbike (also rent outrageous leather outfit if that is your thing) and cruise at 140kph for several hours until you cross France and into Northern Spain… Send your maletas by fedex to your next destination and obtain helmets for Mrs. Marketman and find a way to squeeze in the Kid…

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Holland is one of the top three exporters of agricultural products in the WORLD. They export shipload after shipload of bulbs to the U.S., Germany and Japan that are then grown and the cut flowers and plants sold in those markets. Doing some quick research yielded this incredible factoid…that Holland exports 540 million kilos of tomatoes, mostly grown in greenhouses! Though bulbs originated in the Himalayas(?!), it is the Dutch that have made them a big-time industry…and the incredibly flat fields outside Amsterdam are home to millions and millions of bulbs that are raised and prepared for export. If you don’t want to head to source and are just a casual tourist, a good place to visit in the city of Amsterdam is the Bloemenmarkt on the Singel canal.

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A recurring theme in the posts of our recent European trip will be food, markets, art/museums, events, ice cream and perhaps a little shopping… In Amsterdam, we made it to the Van Gogh Museum on Paulus Potterstraat which we thought our daughter would appreciate a bit more than the heavier “stuff” at the Rijksmuseum down the road. Turns out the Van Gogh Museum had a special exhibit featuring Rembrandt and Caravaggio; a seemingly unlikely pairing of artists. With a total of 25 paintings of Rembrandt and Caravaggio, the curators sought to bring new light to seemingly similar treatments of subjects, styles, colors, etc. of two Baroque artists who never met each other and who painted in different environments/locales. Frankly, the exhibit was interesting and a bit thought provoking, though the small number of pieces (augmented by several other paintings by painters thought to be part of the “school” of Rembrandt or “school” of Caravaggio) makes one wonder how much of a “stretch” of the imagination one had to make to really believe the theme…

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