Can't afford a European vacation this summer? Do what our contributor Claire Duffett did: Explore Southeast Asia instead.
The biggest flea market in the world, Chatuchak Weekend Market, is almost its own city within Bangkok. To get there, take the Skytrain to Mo Chit and then just follow the crowd. Vendors sell everything from groceries to used clothes to designer goods and (faux) antiques. Stands teem with old boots, cheap dresses, bags of flavored ice and, yes, even fried bugs.
Inside the covered maze of stands, climb over piles of Levis and miniature Buddha figurines to find crafts made by local artisans. Between bouts of browsing, come up for air in the path surrounding the cluster to eat homemade coconut ice cream--though with the thousands of people milling about, the air is less than fresh.
But this is Bangkok, and congestion is as ubiquitous as rice noodle dishes with chili peppers. Fortunately, Chatuchak is the one market that sells unique, affordable goods with vendors who quietly bargain rather than accost passersby, insisting on sales. It's the one not-to-be-missed Bangkok attraction that you probably won't ever want to experience again.
We've long been fans of Tokyo's early morning tourist attraction, the Tsukiji Fish Markets, where travelers willing to brave the streets at 5:30 am can see tons and tons of tuna and other fish changing hands, ready to land as sushi across the restaurants of the city.
The polite Japanese fishmongers of Tsukiji have only just realized something that was always obvious to us: All these tourists really get in the way of business! We remember climbing over piles of fish so we could get a better spot to take photos, and we're sure that there are a whole lot of tourists even more annoying than us.
So, sadly, the Tsukiji fish markets are now limiting access for tourists. As of April 1, tourists are only allowed to enter between 5 and 6:15 am and will have a designated place from which to view the tuna auctions. Of course maybe when it comes to fish markets, an hour is plenty.
We've been coming to you live from Uruguay this week, where we've been scouting the chivito scene, taking in plenty of sun and trying not to eat more than two steaks a day. (It's been hard.)
Stopping at places like Mercado del Puerto in Montevideo hasn't made it any easier. This big meat market--as in they sell meat--touts more beef than we could eat in a year. It also makes for some cool photos, if we do say so ourselves.
We'll be bringing you a full report on our Uruguay Field Trip next week. Until then, our Flickr pool is the place to check out more travel snapshots.
We love a good European Christmas market, with all those wooden toys, warm mugs of mulled wine and fine smelling gingerbread treats. The only problem is deciding which one to go to. While our personal favorites would be Germany's Heidelberg markets and Slovakia's Bratislava markets, we're getting bombarded with other suggestions.
The UK Times just put out a list of the 20 best Christmas markets across Europe, confusing us entirely. Some interesting tips here include Switzerland's largest markets in Basel, getting plenty of bratwurst at Germany's famous Nuremberg Christmas markets and the Ljubljana market held right on the river bank in Slovenia.
Meanwhile, BootsnAll has focused on the 5 cosiest Christmas markets in Europe, and our tip for Bratislava gets confirmed here. Markets in Vienna, Prague and Estonia's capital Tallinn also feature, as well as the Piazza Navona Christmas market in Rome, which has the added bonus of laughing witches. There's nothing like combining a good few holiday traditions to make the most of the season.
Dubai, as everybody knows, is going crazy with building and creating questionably useful things like the world's biggest shopping mall, the tallest building, the ability to ski in the desert and so on. What most of us forget is that Dubai also existed before its boom, and when you visit, the most enjoyable part of your stay might be in finding the real Dubai.
Last weekend's UK Times gave a view on what authentic Dubai could be: the smells. And that's not the shopping mall smells or the the 7-star hotel smells, but what you can find in the original souks and marketplaces usually hidden away from tourists.
Apparently the smell of the spice market is real Dubai, as is the odor of the fish and meat souks, and apparently even the gold market has a special smell--who would've thought?
Nobody loves the weekly supermarket run, even in Paris.
But we all love a good market. Take a load of food that's normally available at your local superstore, clean and neatly packaged, placed at convenient heights on labelled shelves and surrounded by helpful recipes and appropriate sauces.
Now remove the items that are out of season, let a few of each go mouldy, cover everything over with a light covering of dust or mud, stand them in the sun for half a day, then arrange them randomly in rows under plastic covered stalls in overcrowded streets.
Food shopping suddenly becomes a lot more of an attractive prospect. Even something you'd want to do on your holiday.
Christmas is just around the corner, and that means the season for Christmas festivals and Christmas markets has begun. In Belfast, it's time to get ready for the Christmas Continental Market, which takes place on the grounds of City Hall from November 22-December 19.
The market has a cousin, the Spring Continental Market, at which we encountered the above vendor last May, flipping all sorts of weird burgers under the banner "Meats of the World." We were told they'd be back for Christmas...but things like that can change. The Continental Markets draw meat purveyors from all over Europe, and in addition to Meats of the World burgers, you're likely to find things like moosemeat from Sweden being sold this season. The ever-popular Dutch waffle stand is confirmed to reappear.
The Market is divided into "villages," such as German, Irish and European, which have their own related food stands, crafts, and gifts. It's open pretty late for such an event--until 8 pm, Monday through Thursday, and 10 pm on Fridays and Saturdays.
Ah, Provence, land of earthy farmers whose pommes de terre are rich in flavor and fraises are impossibly lush -- much better stuff than that of any supermarket. But as an excerpt from Michèle de La Pradelle's book Market Day in Provence discusses, there's a bit of P. T. Barnum in all those markets, and it works so well because everyone wants to be taken in by all that rustic charm. In fact, "most of the fruits and vegetables available on the market, either at stallholders' or in sedentary shops, were purchased from . . a major wholesale market featuring an extremely broad range of produce from a great variety of sources." As one sellers puts it, "It's important to people that we make our own products, so we have to lie. . . . If I don't say I made it myself, they don't think it's as good."
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by ced138
Ah, Provence, land of earthy farmers whose pommes de terre are rich in flavor and fraises are impossibly lush -- much better stuff than that of any supermarket. But as an excerpt from Michèle de La Pradelle's book Market Day in Provence discusses, there's a bit of P. T. Barnum in all those markets, and it works so well because everyone wants to be taken in by all that rustic charm. In fact, "most of the fruits and vegetables available on the market, either at stallholders' or in sedentary shops, were purchased from . . a major wholesale market featuring an extremely broad range of produce from a great variety of sources." As one sellers puts it, "It's important to people that we make our own products, so we have to lie. . . . If I don't say I made it myself, they don't think it's as good."
