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Friday, May 6, 2011

La Boqueria Mercat

Smack in the middle of Barcelona's main strip - Las Ramblas - the dumping ground for cruise ship passengers and throngs of other tourists, souviener merchants, and various meanderers... is one of the cities main marketplaces.  


La Boquiria mercat, as it is called, is convientiently located next to city metro hub.  For locals, however, it's not so conveniently barraced behind walls of gawkers, slow paced tour-map multi-taskers, and gaggles of young Spanish out to look cool on the scene.  It's serious fun to watch the old folks - who actually use this market as their grocer - get cranky and irritated at people standing in their way.  We saw one guy use his newspaper to continuously smack the hood of a Mercedes full of teenagers when the driver didn't stop before a crosswalk line.  As the old man marched away, he continued to yell Spanish obscenities in their direction until out of earshot.  Bad ass.

La Boqueria is the place for your meats and veggies... if you actually have a kitchen here to cook in.  Sigh.




Otherwise, it's a great place to ooh and awe, pick up a few wares, and sastifiy your sweet tooth.





We picked up a couple of declious chocolate truffles, and scored half of an expensive, exotic fruit called a Pitaya.



On looks alone, we expected the Pitaya to be super sweet.  




The first bite was actually underwhelming.  Three Euros for this???   But the more you keep eating it, the more it starts taking over.





We got half way into our half and Monica exclaimed that it had become addicting.   Basically, it has a subtle sweetness that stimulates the sides of your tongue.  Monica says I should look up a tongue taste map and figure out what's going on, but the dang internet in this hotel translates everything in a poor English translation of German.




Can someone tell me what they heck is a pitaya and what it is doing to me before I deplete our entire bank accounts on these things!?

2 comments:

  1. The internet says its a dragonfruit, which is in the catus family. No word on the tongue phenomenon. - Laura

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