Something new happened in Almerimar this Summer. The medieval market came back this week for August. We decided to check it out early evening, partly to see if it was any different than in July and also because we had heard it was in a new location. Apparently there had been a problem with the port authority and the market didn’t have permission to use the darsena as before. This hadn’t pleased some local businesses as the alternative was to block off 2 streets running alongside the marina!

Actually, although inconvenient to traffic and restuarant deliveries, for the market I liked the change. The stalls were able to be on two sides of the road and the whole thing was more compact and easier to get around. One notable omission however was the street entertainers, which may have been due to there being less open space.

Overall most of the same stalls were there and I think it was a great idea to have another market for the summer visitors. My highlights were the home made soaps which look fantastic and almost too good to use, the wonderful shaped and smelling cheeses AND the stall selling artisan chocolate. There was also lots of beautiful silver jewellery, arts and crafts, lovely sarongs, and an interesting stall dedicated to healing herbs.

For the hungry my friends can strongly recommend the chicken and lamb kebabs, AND we tried the home made crisps which were fantastically crunchy and about a quarter of an inch thick! We managed not to get tempted by the assortment of biscuits and huge trays of home made sponge cake in different flavours including a very pink strawberry one.

We missed the street entertainers in medieval costume, but the taro card readers were still there, the tavernas, the little ponies and a very environmentally friendly carousel for children with horses made from old tyres, powered by a man on a bicycle who handed out lollipops as the kids went round.

The other great thing about the market which re-enforced my village life feeling about Almerimar was the number of people we knew that we bumped into. It had a very Spanish feel about it and seemed to be as much about having a walk on a lovely evening and a chat with friends as it was about buying from the stalls. AND most important of all everyone seemed to be having fun!

I look forward to the next one.

July Medieval Market

More pictures on Flickr