Alicante Mercado

In our travels in Spain, we have noted that most of the larger cities in the country will have at least one and sometimes a few large markets where produce, bakery goods, nuts, olives, eggs, meats, fish and other wares are sold by vendors.

The back of the Mercado.

Flower stall outside the building

Alicante has a magnificent mercado located in the downtown. There are two floors with the top floor being mostly meats and poultry and the downstairs being mostly fish and vegetables.

 

 

Maps of the mercado layout. Red are the meat and poultry vendors, blue are fish vendors and green are vegetable vendors.

The market is usually very busy and vibrant as the vendors serve the customers lining up at their stalls.

And you can get just about any part of the animal that you may want. Spanish cuisine includes many organ meats, so you see these items displayed prominently throughout the displays.

Need a goat’s head or some pig’s feet? No problem, they have you covered.

The fish market is also a cornucopia of seafood featuring the daily local catches. The variety of seafood is vastly larger than that normally seen in the US, that’s for sure.

And then there are the vegetable stands. We wander through the stalls and wonder at the wide variety of fruits and veggies that we are unfamiliar with. We usually end up buying things that we are familiar with, but we should start branching out to include some of the other produce.

In addition to the food stalls there are takeout restaurants and bars where one can get a bite to eat and a caña (small beer), vino or vermut (vermouth is a big thing here).

It is quite entertaining to sit and sip a vermut while noshing on some tapas and enjoying some people watching. You can witness quite the cross-section of the human population as they go about their shopping.

After filling our bags and quenching our thirsts, we head back to our apartment, knowing we will return again and again.

Salud