Sunday Markets and Pashminas

The last thing we need in this area is another Sunday outdoor market. We already have two.We can walk to the Zoco market (a redundancy, since "zoco" means outdoor market in Arabic, I am told) but we rarely do so, because if we went by foot, we would be too tired to walk around all the stalls to do our shopping and looking. We can also drive on Sunday mornings to the "Lemon-tree" market, so-called because it's down the road to Guardamar known locally as the "lemon tree road," due to all the lemon orchards along the way. But last night while reading the Euro Weekly News before bed, I found out that there is indeed a new open-air market in the area--just a little farther down the "lemon tree road" behind the huge Procomobel home furnishings store on the N-332 running north of Torrevieja.

So off we went this morning to explore the new market, because, well, because it is there. We were on the lookout for pashmina scarves to buy as small gifts for our upcoming trip to Denmark. We didn't find them at this new Moncayo Mercadillo. But we did enjoy a walk in the sun, running into a friend from the kitchen store, buying some grapes and carrots, and then a leisurely caña and tortilla while being serenaded by a Mexican mariachi band.

We left in time to catch the tail end of the Zoco market. It's really late in the season to find pashminas, I thought. There's much more interest in selling bathing suits now than in soft neckscarves. But I had seen a lady wearing one just last week; it still can be quite cool in the evening and a pashmina is the exact right thing to have with you if you are out after dark. We each started at opposite ends of the rows of stalls, promising to buy pashminas if we saw any--you can never have too many pashminas.

We met 45 minutes later at the English book store. One of us arrived with four pashminas, purchased as remnants at two different stalls, plus some salted almonds, plus bananas and plums for our weekday lunches. The other arrived with a new caulking gun and a used DVD for evening entertainment.

I'm sure you can guess which of us found the pashminas.