mercat del encants

Three illustrators awoke one morning and made their way through the quiet industrial jungle, towards a market of fleas.


At the market, a kind silver-haired man offered them a paper cone of sugary fried dough sticks in exchange for a couple of shiny coins.


The sweet golden treats were called churros, and were the finest to be had— crunchy and sugary on the outside, soft and warm on the inside. Our three illustrators gobbled them up with delight, as they wandered through the labyrinth of obsolete electronics, forgotten books and unwanted china.


Arabic, Catalan and Spanish filled the air like birdsong, as the three searched for treasures hidden beneath the heaps of stuff, struggling to find the tiniest piece of shade from the Mediterranean sun.


After bargaining with sun-browned wrinkled faces, our three set off in search of something delicious and cooling, a bowl of garlicky gazpacho, from a nearby café. As they selected the little table under the deer head, the lovely Julie appeared and joined the trio for the feast. The bowls were enormous, dripping with condensation from the warm air, and filled to the brim with the chilled soup. Satisfied and comfortably cool, the four stepped out into the afternoon, ready for their next adventure.

marché aux puces

I love, adore, am mad for flea markets. Imagine how thrilled I was when my friend Yelda told me there was a market in town, and that we were going to it. Little did I know until we were almost there, that Saturday's organic farmer's market in Bomonti transforms into something dustier, funkier, but no less delicious on Sundays. Again, how could this have escaped me? It never occurred to me to see what happened in the car park on Sundays.


Osmanlı— Ottoman. Now, I'm sure many antiques were genuinely Ottoman, but still. Eighty lira for antique scissors? They were magnificent though— but no matter how hard Yelda fought for a more reasonable price, he would not budge. The lowest I was able to argue down a Soviet medal was twenty lira, and now that I think of it, I should have accepted. It looked so smart on my blazer.



I was delighted to discover that the gözleme ladies from the organic bazaar were at their usual Saturday spot, busy as bees, rolling and folding dough. We stopped for a potato gözleme, a çay and a chat, and Yelda took the picture of me that's at the beginning of this post. I rather like it— she's very talented!