I was really excited about Friday because after our test, we got to go down to the Mercado Central for an assignment. It was so much fun. There was something very similar in Barcelona but I definitely like Alicante’s better. It has two floors: upstairs is all carne and downstairs is pescado. Beware if squeamish!! It’s just stall after stall of dead animals. But I absolutely loved it.
The fun part was really running around the Mercado and trying to talk to the venders. Most were more than willing to help us along the way to answer our questions, especially this one couple who owned a carneceria. If I remember correctly, that’s a shop that only sells cured meat and cheese, nothing fresh. You walk downstairs and you get a huge whiff of salty, smelly ocean. The smell whacks you in the face and not in the best way. A lot of the animals are still moving they’re so fresh. You get used to it after a minute or two… or ten.
Along with fish, you also find a large produce area. They sell everything imaginable, along with the unimaginable. There was one item, it might have been a vegetable, but I’ve definitely never seen it before. There were also dried fruit and nut stalls with buckets of different items. My favorite part were the panercerias. It’s were they sell all the fresh baked breads and other pastries. There were lots of sweet treats but also savory empanadas witch had cheese, tomato, meat, or a combination.
More than anything, I want to be able to communicate with the people so that I know how to order and ask questions to know the proper way to prepare a certain cut of meat or fish. It’s definitely motivating me to learn more Spanish.
