Prices fluctuate wildly and for nearly everything across the shops and markets of this city. Sometimes it is surely related to the quality of the item, sometimes it might just have to do with where or even when one buys it. Oranges, growing all over this city, might come from Spain or Italy or that French island floating out somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea. They might look spectacular or be rotting before my eyes. They can cost something like a euro a pound or four euros a pound. I have gotten great ones and awful ones at any price range.
Today we went to a store that called itself a Halles, like a market hall, but I think it is just a solid single owner large vegetable market with very good prices. It is conveniently located not far from the sea and very close to a frankly brilliant Italian style coffee counter that is all the rage right now with my family. Finding inexpensive stuff like this market, which happened in its own way in the very inexpensive Japan, brings me back to the past somehow. Like, reasonable prices are strangely nostalgic. In the US I think we have been through several waves of largely fake, monopoly driven inflation. I believe that has maybe happened with some things here, but others are untouched.
I got the untouched stuff today.
Here is my shopping items that went into my large sac and was heavy and uncomfortable as we walked around the city and even went to the Photography Museum:
three beautiful red peppers
two very unusually colored heirloom looking carrots
three generic yellow potatos, medium large
three generic onions, medium
A few cute baby artichokes
five mushrooms
a head of garlic
a smaller eggplant of the expensive kind because they had interesting cheaper ones but they were too gigantic! Like, melon sized!
three vine strands full of ripe cherry tomatoes that look pretty nice
A fennel bulb
Total price: Ten Euros and two cents.
My favorite part is they had the machine where you pay in cash at the checkout instead of handing money back and forth. I love those.
It's a good haul. I try to eat a lot of vegetables to allow for all the cheese, champagne, and pastry.
The cheese is still pretty expensive.
This is a close-up of one of the carrots after I ate most of it:
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