The City Market

Welcome to The City Market! Here you can purchase all kinds of goods from wine and cheese to shirts and fake lobsters... we took Alberta friend to check it out before she left.

There are many quaint little places to eat ~ with choices ranging from Mexican to Korean to the standard Sandwich shop.


If eating isn't your thing then you can check out the many shops or kiosks filled with colourful souvenirs ranging from windchimes or stuffed animals to... (that's the back of hubby's head there!)

the souvenir shirts tucked away beneath the whale.

Our mission this day was to find something with a local flavour for Alberta friend to take home with her. I had the PERFECT idea - Dulce!! What is dulce you ask? Well check out the following photo. Dulce is another term for "seaweed". Here in the Atlantic provinces (of Canada), with the proximity to the Atlantic ocean, dulce is in great supply. It is harvested and sold in plastic bags or, more often, in small brown bags. Many Maritimers just LOVE this stuff and chew on it like gum. To be honest I've never eaten even a piece of it. I suppose I had to scrape too much off the boat I lived on...to relate it to something you EAT. Alberta friend was game and picked up a bag for her parents.

While we were looking for the vendor to pay for the dulce I saw the cutest lobster trap with a stuffed lobster in it. Teasingly I coaxed my very reluctant daughter to "catch" the sea critter which she did with usual teenage enthusiasm....

Luckily though, Alberta friend jumped in to catch herself a little one too. And she smiled too!

Well! Not to be outdone by a Prairie Alberta friend, daughter found herself the LARGEST lobster to "catch" and smugly hammed it up for the picture.

*Whew*! We found the vendor before the girls got down and dirty in a scrap over their lobster catches! Here is a happy Maritimer harking the virtues of dulce. He embodies the spirit of where I live, bright, colourful and friendly. He certainly made our day!

Alberta friend looked for locally grown fresh fruit to feed daughter. Daughter has been reduced to eating grocery store fruit that doesn't quite have the freshness or taste of locally grown produce. They were hunting for blueberries and blackberries ~ Daughter hasn't tried blackberries and both Alberta friend and I are convinced she'd like them if she tried them.

The girls check out some of the food vendors but didn't find anything they wanted to buy on this occasion.

The jewellery was fun to poke through...and hey ~ check out those puffer fish hanging from the beam!! These dead fellas had those plastic eyes glued on (souvenirs) but I told the girls about swimming by puffer fish in Mexico and scaring them, so they'd blow up like these guys did. Boy the fun I had swimming in tropical-type waters!!

Oh no! I forgot to mention that HUBBY came out that day! We enjoyed ourselves more than the girls did - they noted that it was "just another market"...and if you've seen one, you've seen them all. Oh to be blase at such an age! Hubby and I enjoyed the sights, sounds and smells of the stalls and decorations. Obviously the older we get the more the little things enthrall us!

The girls are heading back up the second aisle looking for a way out. It was a beautiful day outside and they wanted to get back there!

Hubby was hungry and checked out the Korean eatery. Although he looks happy here the ending wasn't quite as nice. Hubby wasn't SUPER hungry so did not want the huge meal usually available to customers, by way of one of those combination plates. A discussion ensued between the shopkeepers (whom we took to be a married couple) before they decided that hubby could have 1/2 the serving size...but for the same price as a whole serving. Hubby politely declined and went off in search of nourishment. I don't know what he ended up chowing down on as the girls and I went one way and he went the other. Bye hubby!!

Oh look! The girls found their way out!

They are headed to the city centre's lovely park. I took some great and interesting pictures in the park...so stay tuned for the next post!!