During our stay in the northern city of Porto we visited the colourful daily market – Mercado do Bolhão. It’s a glorious place to explore and a great way to get a taste of local life.
The market was pretty quiet when we visited in the afternoon, but I imagine mornings are the busiest time when the produce is at its freshest. Mercado do Bolhão was everything you might picture a Portuguese market to be – from glistening sardines to bountiful displays of fruit and veg, stalls bursting with colourful flowers to traditional handmade ‘azulejos’ (those ceramic tiles you see practically everywhere in Portugal).
We treated ourselves to some enormous green olives which we munched away on whilst exploring the stalls, and couldn’t resist buying some juicy oranges for the train ride back to Lisbon.
It’s no surprise that the med is so famous for its healthy diet and long life expectancy – the food on offer here was nothing but nutritious and bursting with goodness. Next time I go to Portugal I’m going self-catering so I get the chance to cook some of that delicious looking fish for my dinner.
The boyfriend even managed to get himself a lucky Portuguese cock, bought from a tiny, gentle Portuguese lady who made up for her lack in height with boundless enthusiasm for her collection of cocks.
Unfortunately Portuguese cocks don’t travel well, but lucky for Rob I’m a dab hand with the superglue…
Wandering Loulou 
Omigosh, we weren’t at the same market, but we could have been! On my post today I even used a photo of the same fish and yesterday Porto was my focus. Did you do a port tasting?
Yes, loved the Port wine caves 🙂 Going to get a post up soon. We went to 3 – Ferreira, Offley and Sandeman (which I saw you went to too!) Brought some Ferreira white Port home, couldn’t resist…
be sure to try the white port with tonic and lime. It was delish.