Barcelona, Interlude: La Boqueria

I am a liar, and have not posted for the past two days, but I realized in the course of sorting through my camera that of the nauseating number of photographs I took (683), well over two hundred are of various Gaudi structures. Thus I think my shock-induced hiatus can be excused, and also my cousin came to visit, and, well, so I've been a little stressed.

When I find myself in times of trouble, Father Joseph comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be... Oh, so that's not how the song goes? Had Paul McCartney visited Barcelona before writing that song, I think he would have sung a Spanish tune:

Bad one-in-the-morning induced puns aside, La Boqueria was my favorite place to visit in Barcelona, narrowly edging out Barri Gotic's mojito bar, and conveniently located five minutes' walk from the Winter Palace (this name is ironic in the extreme, since the Czar's apartment was about a million degrees too hot - I slept with my mattress wedged in the doorway to the balcony, desperately hoping for a wayward breeze). We stopped by there every day, usually after a croissant and un café con leche, to feast our eyes and gorge ourselves on fresh fruit.

This is what the average stand looked like - dozens upon dozens of fruits piled high, rendered all the more exotic by their Spanish names. The variety here makes the Asian market by my house look like small fry - try finding fresh cactus flower there! Or this many fresh papaya, or dragon fruit, or...



No matter how exotic, produce here was so unbelievably cheap it made me want to cry tears of joy. It's about sixty cents for two mangoes and two plums - versus upwards of three euro for one mango in Vienna. Suffice it to say that my wallet was not happy to return to the Naschmarkt produce aisles.

The most colorful stands in the market were easily the fruit stands selling freshly pressed smoothies - every imaginable combination was there for the drinking, including some unexpected ones (cactus fruit, for one, but also coconut and blackberry seems oddly exotic). I loved it when the actual fruits were shown above the placards, but that didn't make it any easier to decide on a flavor.

Those forks sticking up at the bottom of the picture were wedged into plastic containers containing freshly-cut fruit, or else stabbed into a watermelon slice or half a pineapple, that you could buy for about a Euro - yum!

Of course, there were plenty of less healthy things for sale... like the produce stands' vitamin-deficient, sugar-loaded counterparts. Just as much color, a hundred times more tooth decay. I love how the fried eggs and the foot-long gummy snakes look.

Also on display, mysterious jars of brightly colored things that look like punch. I wish I'd sampled some just so I'd know what they are - I think they're some kind of heavily candied fruit in syrup, but I'm not sure.

The center of the market is devoted to seafood, of which there is an incredible selection, given Barcelona's location on the coast. Note the fresh octopus! I wish I could have bought a freezer's worth of these little guys and taken them back to Vienna with me. I grow weary of smoked salmon, and am not yet brave enough to debone an entire zander by myself, in my tiny kitchen, without a fish knife and an extensive first aid kid handy. But I could totally cook an eight-legged kraken - I have visions of tentacles wriggling out from beneath the cover of a pot. Someday!

(I am perhaps too fond of fish.)