Markets of Barcelona

Don't get me wrong - I love living in Italy (most of the time) and I love my neighborhood markets. But. BUT - Spanish markets make Italian ones look like the Safeway near my old apartment on Columbia Pike. Folks, that's not a nice Safeway.


Guidebooks and personal recommendations sent us in the direction of La Boqueria, the common name for Mercat de Sant Josep de la Boqueria. Located off La Rambla, the market had a selection of produce unlike anything I've ever seen - a half dozen types of mushrooms here, four or five types of tomatoes there, the only thing I was left wanting for was a kitchen to cook it all in.


La Boqueria is no slouch in the fish and meat department either. Since at least the 13th century, vendors have taken their goods to this market to sell. It has existed in the form we see now for a little over a hundred years.


We knew to start with that we weren't going for groceries - we were going for immediate gratification. Friends had recommended the market with raves about the tapas bars inside the venue. We were hungry and a bit confused when we first went in so when we saw cooked for, we went for it immediately, thinking that this is what our friends had recommended. We shared a few bites of different sorts of pincho (snacks) like the yummy friend doughy things on a stick above. Our joint knowledge of Catalan is zero so we winged it, buying a bite of whatever looked good. Luckily we didn't get too far into lunch before finding the real tapas joints.


Happy to have held our appetites, we settled down to seats at a bar and orders some patatas bravas and albóndigas with a couple glasses of Estrella beer. Yum. A great start to what ended up being a well-fed, long-walked long weekend.

And to close it all up, we visited the Mercat de Santa Caterina on our final day. Taking in the fresh meats and produce, we were less impressed than at La Boquiera. Walking outside was another story - the multi-colored ceramic roof is bright and curvy. Like the sculptures, statues, and buildings scattered throughout the rest of Barcelona, the imaginative design of the Mercat de Santa Caterina turns an ordinary thing into a work of art.