Grand Central Terminal market

There are times when you have thoughts that run through your mind one after another from a different place and a different time – thoughts of walking through a market in a New York train station, of a story called ‘Hugo’ unfolding inside a Paris railway station and of memories emanating from the Victoria Terminus in Mumbai.

You look at these thoughts as they pass by like you were looking at a roll of film unfold before you. These are negatives that are placed side by side in your mind but are geographically located in different continents. Something binds them – they all hold within them histories of the railroad and of the time when the making of a “place” came about from detailing a ceiling, a grand clock or a monumental turret in a way that generations later, we still wonder about how time could stand still then as it never does now to make such inspiring work possible.

The experience of the Grand Central Terminal in New York city and the market within it are heightened in my mind with the imagery of Martin Scorcese’s 2011 film ‘Hugo’ particularly the opening scenes of the little boy looking through the hands of the station clock and the story’s simultaneous perception of ingenuity in the making of clocks and in the making of films with the railroad station as its backdrop.
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I really liked the way Tony Hiss describes the Grand Central Terminal in his book The Experience of Place - “The main concourse of Grand Central – an enormous room, with 14 entrances – is only one part of an intricate structure that was opened to the public in February of 1913 and is justly famous as a crossroads, a noble building, an essential part of midtown Manhattan, and an ingenious piece of engineering that can handle large numbers of trains, cars and people at once. It was designed to handle huge crowds and to impress people with the immensity and the dignity of enclosed public places in a modern city. From the accounts left by its builders however, it was not designed to provide the experience actually available there today. That experience is one of the unplanned treasures of New York.” There is more about its history and its design here.

The market at Grand Central Terminal is where you go to for gourmet food – for artisanal cheese and bread, for speciality coffee beans, for hard-to-get spices, for fresh fish and for gourmet chocolates. You can read here an interesting description of the food merchants, including Zaro’s, Murray’s cheese and Penzeys spices, amongst many others. The market is located on the east side of Grand Central. It can be entered either from inside the Grand Central or from the entrance at Lexington avenue at East 43rd street. I entered the market from inside the Grand Central and after the overwhelming experience of the railroad station, when you walk through the market and come onto Lexington avenue, it seems as if it's one entrance connects you to the city's past and its other entrance to the city's future.

The Grand Central market came into being when a revitalisation plan was commissioned for the Grand Central Terminal in 1990. A $425 million master plan was presented at a public hearing and subsequently adopted in concept by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The retail specialists Williams Jackson Ewing had been asked to prepare a master retail plan to address services and amenities and the “new” Grand Central was reopened in 1998.

As I think about the Grand Central Terminal and its market, I recollect the days in Mumbai from twenty years ago when we travelled by the local trains starting and ending at the Victoria Terminus in Mumbai. It is a building designed by the British architect F.W.Stevens and built over ten years starting in 1878. It is an example of Victorian Gothic Revival architecture blended with elements from traditional Indian architecture. It became a symbol for Mumbai as a mercantile port city within the British Commonwealth. The building was originally intended to house the railway station and the offices of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway. A number of ancillary buildings were added later, but it never had a market planned within it. The original building is still in use for suburban traffic and is used by over 3 million commuters daily. (Source: UNESCO World Heritage list )

Crawford market in Mumbai

The Victoria Terminus could have had a market section within it similar to the Grand Central Terminal market and it may have been successful with its floating population being extremely high. However, the Crawford market, just north of the Victoria Terminus had been completed in 1869. It is another magnificent structure of Mumbai with a built-up area of 6,000 sq.ft. It was designed by the British architect William Emerson and is a blend of Norman and Flemish architectural styles. It has been primarily a fruit, vegetable and poultry market with the merchants also selling imported food and cosmetics.

In Mumbai, the experiences of the Crawford market, the Victoria Terminus and the Flora Fountain, built in 1864 are woven together. The Hornby road (now named D.N.Road) linked the Crawford market to the Flora Fountain with several Neo-classical and Gothic Revival buildings built on commercial plots along the broad avenue road. Over the years, the market building had grown into an urban precinct with intersecting streets of formal and informal vendors selling textiles, stationery and household goods. This is an experience different from that of the Grand Central Terminal Market, where it is one street lined with shops on its either side and yet both the Grand Central Market and the Crawford market are part of the histories of railroad stations – one, in New York city and the other in Mumbai.

Related Post:
The Marketplace: Lonely Planet Blog Carnival
Faneuil hall marketplace
Marketplaces of the world: a Listing
Street corner in Mumbai

Gimme Coffee

We had not heard about Gimme coffee until a friend introduced us to it a month ago. With every cup of gimme coffee we learnt more about it. We heard more, we read more. We realized that it was not just a cup of coffee, it was not just a cafeteria, it was the whole new culture that we were getting absorbed into.

Here’s what it is. Gimme coffee is the neighbourhood coffee place. The first Gimme coffee shop opened at Cayuga Street in Ithaca, Upstate New York in the year 2000. Thereafter, more outlets opened in Ithaca and at Brooklyn and Manhattan in New York city. Soon, this small artisan roastery became a known name as it began to feature in the news. The GQ magazine said: “This is serious stuff, seriously good”. The Forbes Traveller wrote: “Yes, there’s life beyond Starbucks”

So, what made Gimme coffee so good? It’s the roasting, they said. I’m sharing here a link to Gimme Roastery on their website which is an absolute must-read! With this kind of attention being poured into a cup of coffee, it had to be good. They also share with you on their website, information about the farms where the coffee is sourced from on their ‘sustainability’ page where they talk about organic coffees, relationship coffees and so on.

For us, the first cup we experienced was at the Green Street outlet in Ithaca. The following weekend, we were cajoled by our friend into visiting the outlet at Cayuga street. Did we really have to visit Gimme coffee again?! We had only a few weekends in Ithaca and all we seemed to be doing with them was going from one Gimme coffee place to another. But, of course, now we do think it was all worth it! And, it’s not that I have not wanted to share with others our very own ‘chai’ culture which I wrote about earlier at: what is chai

So, while we were at this Cayuga place on the Sunday morning, we looked around us and the place was filled with young people sipping their coffee and browsing the net. In India, we gradually moved over from the ‘Indian coffee shop’ to the ‘Café coffee day’. Actually, not quite. The people who visited the Indian coffee shop were a different generation from the ones who “hang out” at the Café Coffee day. Of course, there’s a few of us who belong to that previous generation who are still around and go to the Café Coffee day as well, for the “conversations” part of the coffee experience although I must say we just can never converse in the midst of all that music and din as effortlessly as the youngsters do these days!

The Café coffee day experience in India is probably more comparable to the Starbucks experience in the American city. Gimme coffee is a bit different. It’s not about “being on the go”. It’s not about “conversations”. It’s more about the coffee. As we waited for our coffee at the Cayuga place, I saw a book on their shelves – ‘Café Life New York: an Insider’s Guide’ It was a book about New York city’s neighbourhood cafes. I browsed through it with great interest and came across these lines about the Gimme coffee: ‘Nobody comes to Gimme coffee for its décor, or its roominess, they come for the excellent coffee’ That said it all.

This reminds me that I have earlier written about the Stolen Coffee room which was really only about the décor because it’s objects from Chor bazaar made it so special. And now, this sharing about the artisan roasted coffee at the neighbourhood café is more about how one experiences a city and imbibes the culture of its people as you walk the streets, spend time at the café and have the opportunity to know experiences that are special to those who live there.

There was always a prelude to our visit to Gimme coffee. A past experience that had to be shared or a story about it’s many flavours, since we were going to be able to sample just a few. There is the 'La Primavera Decaf' coffee with its taste of sweet cocoa, currant and brown sugar and the 'Finca San Luis' which tastes of crisp citrus, grape, apple and peach with an aroma that reminds of orange and fresh florals. This was how deep the experience could go! You could say this was way beyond the real thing, that it was about branding or about romanticizing the experience. Well, whatever it was, we enjoyed it!

And, then there were times when we came back home and continued to talk about coffee! We talked about R.K.Narayan’s essays on coffee and our friend shared this YouTube video about the television sitcom Seinfeld, (another cultural phenomenon in America) and we watched an episode from ‘The Opposite’ on the coffee table book about coffee tables! That was the epilogue that seems to have made the coffee experience totally immortal for us!!

The taste of the coffee lingers on, only this time the aroma ties up with much more because in America it was the coffee lens through which we saw life in the city.

Ithaca Farmers' Market

The week we arrived in Ithaca, the local Ithaca Times carried an article on the Silent movie era and its early days in Ithaca. It said ‘In 1913, Theodore Wharton came to Ithaca to shoot footage of typical college life, he liked the natural beauty of the town with its gorges and its lake and produced over 100 film titles from about 1914 to 1919. This is one of the few original silent film studios in the United States’. However, most people know Ithaca as the place in Upstate New York where Cornell University was founded in 1865 and which continues till today to be home to students from all over the world.

 
For a student at Cornell, the University campus is all they know when they leave school. There is no time for anything else. Some remember the quadrangle where their department is housed. Others only remember the library where they spent all the hours of all their days here. For a student, this is definitely the centre of the universe with nothing else beyond. But, if you do not come here as a student, it is nice to also experience the town. For instance, there is the Cayuga lake, there are the Taughannock Falls, there is Stewart park and there is the Ithaca Farmer’s Market!

The market is a co-operative with over 150 vendors who live within 30 miles of Ithaca. These vendors bring fruits, vegetables, meat, poultry as well as freshly baked goods, honey and sauces to the market at the Steamboat landing locatio (which we visited) every Saturday and Sunday. There is also the Dewitt Park location where the market takes place on Tuesdays and Thursdays. There are artists and photographers who exhibit their work here. The Ithaca farmers’ market first opened in 1973 as a place for local food growers to sell their produce and for local artisans to market their crafts. Today, the location at the Steamboat landing is also a picnic place as people come here to shop, to listen to music and to just sit by the waterfront.

I am sharing here some photos from our weekend visit, when the weather was absolutely wonderful and we got a glimpse of the ‘shop+picnic’ scene in Ithaca.

There is a lot more about the Ithaca Farmers’ market at: http://www.ithacamarket.com/
 

Faneuil Hall marketplace

I am sitting by the Boston Harbour as I write this post. There’s the hum of people talking as they walk past and the live music that’s playing nearby. There’s a view of the boats at the harbour with the reflection of the afternoon sun shimmering on their sides. This is just a two-minute walk from the Faneuil Hall marketplace where I’ve been all morning, my second time this week. It’s the weekend and there are crowds everywhere.

The Faneuil Hall building as you approach it from the Boston Harbour side

The Faneuil hall has served as a marketplace and meeting hall since it was built in 1742. It was donated to Boston by wealthy merchant Peter Faneuil to accommodate farmers bringing their products to town. The hall was built on land gained by the filling of a cove near the dilapidated town dock. The lower level of the hall was divided into stalls which sold meat, vegetables and dairy products. The large meeting room on the upper floor became Boston’s official town hall.

The Plan of Boston showing the long, rectangular Quincy market and the North & South market buildings on either side as they face the Faneuil Hall. To the right, the map shows the Boston harbour. The 'North End' seen above is an old, Italian neighbourhood.

In 1761, fire gutted Faneuil Hall, burning the interior. Two years later, repairs were completed, this time financed by a public lottery. In 1826, the Marketplace was expanded to include the new Quincy market building (as well as the North market & South market buildings) and became the hub of New England commerce in response to Boston’s rapid growth. These three market buildings along with the Faneuil Hall’s market stalls continued to be Boston’s wholesale food distribution center until the 1960’s. (Source: National Park Service, U.S.Department of the Interior, MA)

The small sign of old times still exists, unlike the signage culture of today where urban landscapes with the scale and intensity of hoardings are becoming "cities of signs"

Today, the Faneuil Hall is not a market in the traditional sense. There are no vendors selling fruits and vegetables or fish and meat. There are no flower sellers or booksellers. There is no barter, there is no bargaining, not anymore. The ground floor contains shops and eating establishments. The second floor meeting room is used by the Park Rangers of the National Park Service. The third floor has the museum and armory of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts. Here is a link to the official website: http://www.faneuilhallmarketplace.com/

A shopfront inside the Quincy market building with its line of eateries offering clam chowder, bagel pizzas, icecreams and starbucks coffee and so much else.
 
Now, the Faneuil hall is visited by not only the locals who live in Boston but also tourists who come here from all over the country and from all over the world. You can buy food, you can buy clothes, you can learn about the history of the place, you can hear live music sometimes.

The urban space between the three market buildings becomes the place for social interaction
 
You find places to be with the food and the music; spaces where you can sit and watch people as you contemplate about life. The Faneuil Hall marketplace and the Boston Harbour are urban spaces that are designed to let you do that. And, I think that’s what I like about this marketplace. Here, you can relax after you shop, you can spend time with your family outdoors in the midst of the shopping and the eating. It’s a place where you can take a stroll, have a drink, laugh together as you “do nothing”.

I am reminded of Jan Gehl’s book Life between buildings which emphasizes that planning processes must begin by understanding the spaces between buildings. He says, “First life, then spaces, then buildings – the other way around never works.” The book was first published in 1971 and continues to be a widely used handbook on the relationship between public spaces and the social life in cities.

In an Indian bazaar, the “life between buildings” is sometimes about livelihoods, sometimes about shelter (with streets often encroached upon by migrants & the informal sector). It is never about “doing nothing”. It is not a concept associated with our urban spaces. We do not have planned urban spaces. We have streets that flow into each other and life flows in these streets.

The pushcarts inside the market buildings create an informal environment for shopping. Faneuil Hall marketplace was the first in the country to introduce pushcart shopping providing entrepreneurial opportunity to New England artisans.
 
As I walk the streets of Boston and absorb the marketplace experience at Faneuil Hall, I realize that there is so much to appreciate here and to learn from and simultaneously know that the complexity in the streets of India has its own place. It is yet an unplanned complexity, one in which there are many who participate, knowingly or unknowingly. Of course, the mind goes back to India and to Russell market in Bangalore which a friend tells me has been buzzing with Ramzan festivity in the evenings.

A sign that we'd like to see outside the many, many historic market buildings in the cities of India conserving architectural heritage and our urban heritage.
 
I sit down a second time now to continue writing this post, now at the Coop Store at Harvard Square, away from the sunny marketplace environment of the Faneuil Hall and the Quincy market. The Coop, founded by Harvard students in 1882 and established as a cooperative is open to the public offering four floors of books and a cafetaria. The Coop is a store where you browse books with greater leisure than you would in a library, sipping your coffee and knowing that the Coop Store like the Faneuil Hall is designed for you to contemplate about life and all you want to learn from it.


Related Posts:
The Marketplace: Lonely Planet Blog Carnival #23

Existential Blogger

I sat down to write my next blogpost and it looked like the handbrakes were on or something. I wasn’t making any progress. I couldn’t make any progress. No thoughts. Then, came the question, not for the first time: Why do I blog? It’s an existential question, which I never try to answer. If Douglas Adams’ supercomputer Deep Thought had taken seven million years to think about the question ‘what is the meaning of life’ only to come up with the answer ‘Forty-two’, what was I, a mere earthling going to find here? Nothing. So, while I wait for my world of blogging to find its own meaning, I thought I’d write about some of the people I’ve met on this galactic experience in the blogosphere.

There’s been fellow bloggers who’ve been extremely supportive with their comments and suggestions. Amongst these have been Radha Vijay who writes at Musings of a Night Owl, Meena Venkataraman who writes at Travel Tazzels and Anjali who writes at Annaparabrahma. I have often read and re-read posts at Windy Skies learning something new each time.

Two years ago, on a suggestion from a friend, I wrote a mail to Lonely Planet asking to be a part of their Blogsherpa program. I started to contribute as a ‘Lonely Planet Blogger’. This also meant being part of an e-group of Travel writers and Travel Bloggers who posted regularly on Lonelyplanet.com. There was a lot to learn from the questions and answers that went back and forth in this forum. There were places that I’d never heard of before that a fellow blogger would write about and it would make me curious. Met some really nice people there.

The friend who had suggested writing to Lonely Planet had been travelling in India for three months and we had first met in Bombay. Laura Mannering had quit her job as a Features Editor in the UK to give herself some time to see the world and to meet new people. Laura got back to London after an entire year of travelling and started a travel blog: World out there. It had fascinated me when I had first met Laura that one could travel on and on for a whole year. And now, months later, I was reading her detailed accounts of the places she had been to, the stories I had missed, the places that had happened in the months after the time in India.

In the early months of being part of the Blogsherpa program at Lonely Planet, there were exchanges with bloggers, through the Blog carnival series that was started and through writing guest posts. At this time, I came across ‘A Traveler’s Library’ – a blog that reviewed books and films that inspired travel. That was for me such an interesting way to think and discuss travel. Vera Marie wrote about places she’d been to and books she’d read and you felt as if you were sitting across the table listening to her, forgetting that all of this was only coming to you from a computer screen.

Then, I came across Wandering Educators - a global community of educators who share their travel experiences and dialogue about education and travel. They write about Artisans, Intercultural Education, Performing arts and many, many other interesting stories about travel. Also, there was Pocket Cultures – a group blog that makes connections between people from different cultures. Some of their collaborative posts have been really interesting such as this one: School days around the world where contributors from around the world talk of a typical school day in their country.

A few months ago, I learnt about 10 year itch, travel consultants who offer custom designed trips to India such as the Ladakh Gompa circuit, MP Unplugged, Temples & Tigers, the Kochi loop and many more innovative itineraries . And, more recently, I discovered the creative team at Spark the magazine – an online literary magazine that explores the world through writing, photography and art. They have some really interesting stories, for example, in Feb 2012, Spark interviewed the co-founder of Grassroutes – a fellowship program that encourages travel through rural India and working with changemakers.

I think I will stop now. If the next blogosphere underpass construction project suddenly demolishes Indian Bazaars (Douglas Adams talks of the intergalactic highway, in Bangalore we have the road dug up anywhere and everywhere to build an underpass, so it's the first on my recall...), at least the draft acknowledgement piece of this 'Saga that was going nowhere' would have been written!

Exploring Borough Market

This is a Guest post by MEENA VENKATARAMAN. In the light of the bright morning sun, Southwark cathedral is a beautiful sight. Days like these are few in otherwise grey London. It is nonetheless cold and we head to the market in search of hot food. Not surprisng at all, the sun is more an accessory, an adornment to what is a beautiful day. London has some of the best food markets and the one we are visiting is one of the oldest. We step on the cobbled street.

The first array of shops are lined along a narrow lane behind the cathedral. We spy a few cafes tucked away, bustling with people. A couple of steps down this lane and we enter the market itself. At once the colours, shapes and the distinct aroma of all kinds of food hits me, an assualt on the senses. I am drawn to colour like a moth to a flame and I reach for my camera. The first line of shops are full of sweet treats, a mouth watering spectacle. As we walk by, we pick up free samples to taste. If only we could buy them all.

Borough Market is ancient. The trick to surviving change is to adapt and assimilate, Evolve as they say. And so it has been with this market. When the market first stared is still speculative. Some say the 13th century or earlier, when the market was established in response to the growing traffic of traders selling their produce - grain, fruits, vegetables, livestock and fish on London Bridge. But the present location was a piece of land called the 'Triangle' which was purchased by the residents when the first market was closed down by an act of parliament in 1755. The market has been on the scene since and, in addition to the local produce, it has managed to assimilate the cultural vibrance of London as a city. It is not just British produce you find here, but all kinds of food from around the globe - Turkish, Middle Eastern, Malaysian, Indian, Thai and a whole host of others.

The vegetables are eye-catching. ‘Capsicum’ I say, ‘Peppers’ I am corrected :). The bright red tomatoes and fruits of all shapes and sizes sit neatly stacked. Behind them is a neat line of spices. Besides food and vegetable, the market sells art. Brightly arrayed cards are on display.

And then, there is the cheese. Completely fresh and extremely tasty. Stripped off packaging that it normally comes with in the supermarket the proposition of buying cheese seemed so much more appealing. The whites and mild yellows with promise of milky goodness seemed to linger on the taste buds. My personal favourite was the Cheddar. But there were so many others that were just as mention worthy.

It is a Saturday and what most people are here for is the food. It is hard making a choice in this place. But what makes it harder are the free samples being given away. So, we barter our appetite to what we think would make us a good meal and stand in patches of sun as we eat. The vegetable soya burger is great. Some distance away we buy some mulled wine. Out of curiosity we ask the lady what spices have gone into this yummy warm christmasy concoction. I remember cloves and nutmeg from that conversation and cinnamon maybe. A little away the Malaysian stall is running brisk business. Huge pots of curry are being made and given away in boxes. Where else would you get such a wonderful meal for under a fiver.

We walk along. The market is huge. We enter the section selling meat. Fish lies stacked on ice to preserve freshness I guess. There is more food and vegetable. We walk through and come out on the other side of the market.

What strikes me is how the market has shaped things to come. Around the market there are several restaurants. People seem to be queueing up to get it. The entire area has something special about it. There is a sort of synergy and there seems to be plenty of room for every kind of business here.

After a good two or three hours roaming the lanes inside and out we finally step out of this gem of a market. But it has been a frequent haunt with its promise of good food and drink when we find ourselves in the area.

I'd like to thank Meena for writing this guest post and for sharing her photographs. This is the link to Meena's blog: Travel Tazzels

Marketplaces of the World - a listing

This is the start of a cumulative list of blogposts on Marketplaces of the World.

I’d like to thank fellow bloggers who have already shared their links or written guest posts here:
The Marketplace– a Lonely Planet Blog Carnival - Lonely Planet Bloggers
Keswick Market in Cumbria – by Radha Vijay of 'Musings of a Night Owl'
Witches Market – by Meena Venkataraman of 'Travel Tazzels'
Albert Cuyp market in Amsterdam – by Hasti Tarekat

If you have written earlier about a Marketplace anywhere in the world and can share the link, I’d like to add it to the list here. If you can write a guest post on a market that you have visited recently or not yet written about, that would be very welcome too.

For sharing links and suggestions, please do leave a comment on this blogpost or write an email to: kiranmkeswani(at)gmail(dot)com

The list continues here:
Bengali Bazaars (in Bangladesh) at 'I Should Cocoa'
The Food Bazaars...who needs organic? at 'I was in Turkey'
La Boqueria Market at 'I drink my tea sweet'
Iran: Bazaars of Shiraz at 'Ramble and Wander'
Sixth Street Market in Cincinnati at 'Blog at Cincinnati.com'
Istanbul: bazaars, boza, fish bread, palimpsest at 'Hearthstrung'

Related Post:
Bazaars of India: a listing

Marketplaces around the world: an archival film

A really interesting film with a narration that reminded me so much of the way the film ‘Citizen Kane’ begins, the same tone, the same excitement! Perhaps, the identity of the american radio broadcasts from the 1940s and ’50s – a time that many of us know about only through the Hollywood films and now also from historical archives that get online like this one!

MARKET PLACES AROUND THE WORLD

www.britishpathe.com

The Marketplace: Lonely Planet Blog Carnival #23

The theme of this Blog carnival is a journey through a market or bazaar anywhere in the world. These thoughtful and exciting stories unravel life in the marketplace experienced at different times but all coming together here for you to transcend from wherever you are at this moment to where the Lonely Planet Travel bloggers think you would love to be!!

David Bennett of Quillcards tells us the story of the Changing Times In The Largest Indoor Market In Europe as he describes the Kirkgate Market in the center of Leeds in Yorkshire in the north of England.

“As long as I have known Kirkgate market it has been the province of ‘working class’ Leeds. Some people in Leeds never shop there, preferring to shop in more upmarket places. So to see Jamie Oliver’s Ministry of Food in Kirkgate market helps to bring about a paradigm shift in the way markets are seen.”

Jennifer Hattam of The Turkish Life recollects her experience at an Uzbek bazaar - the Chorsu bazaar area at Tashkent in Uzbekistan which she had noted down as a journal entry during her travel there in November 2004.

“We dipped our fingers to taste honey dripping from a knife and spices sold out of canvas sacks as nearby vendors sat and churned huge vats of a marshmallow-like substance and offered tastes to passers-by.”

Brandon of Freewheelings writes about the Mysticism in an Indian Bazaar sharing an enlightening experience as he sat at a chai (tea) stall bench in the middle of a New Delhi bazaar in North India.

“All the noise of the contemporary bazaar for that moment stopped, all the movement.  It was just me and that bench amidst a sea of uninterpreted perception, a procession of thought imagery.  I had, for that moment, no question to pose to the universe and no quarrel.  For that split second I had tapped into what I believe to be the collective unconscious."

In A Leap Into The Dark Aubrey Groves writes about the Camden Market in North London set on and around the canal.

“It is full of trendy stalls with some of the wackier designer clothes, music, hippyesque handicrafts from around the World, antiques, and an excellent array of cheap food stalls reflecting London´s multiculturalism.”

Anuradha Shankar of a Wandering Mind writes about the historical Hampi Bazaar in South India

“From gold and diamonds to horses and cows, the markets boasted of a variety which impressed even visitors from foreign shores! These marketplaces weren’t like our roadside shops, but well planned and well laid out areas, paved with stones, with residences for the merchants as well stables for their mounts!”

Erin Ridley of La tortuga Viajera writes about Madrid’s markets – about El Rastro, a popular market in Madrid’s oldest neighbourhoods as well as about the Mercados which she says are a hybrid between grocery stores and farmers markets.

“Spanish fans, stinky cheeses, fanny packs, fresh fruit, wine by the glass and of course antiques. Madrid’s markets have something for everyone – and a market for everyone.”

Julie from a Lady in London explores more than one market at Lady goes to Market She takes us to the Boroughs market, the Exmouth market, the Leadenhall market as well as to the Camden market.

“There are at least four vendors selling ten different kinds of fresh olives, multiple bread bakers, a handful of specialized cheese shops, two wine stores, a smoothie bar, and a Scottish meat counter. Free samples are given generously, and one could eat an entire meal on bits and pieces alone.”

Louise Heal writes of the La Boqueria – Barcelona’s premier food market

“La Boqueria also does a great line in bars and restaurants. It's not a place for a full meal, rather for a tapas selection of whatever-takes-your-fancy or whatever the chef is doing today. The chalk blackboard menus are testimony to the changing selection.”

Barbara Weibel of Hole in the Donut Cultural Travel describes for us her walk along the Mekong river in Chiang Khong, Thailand.

“In the center of town, vendors sprung up along either side of the street in an unbroken line that stretched as far as I could see. Not the normal trinket sellers, these vendors specialized in food. Plump, fresh fruits. Glistening piles of hot peppers in red, green, and orange. Gelatinous sweets coated in shredded coconut. Piles of wide, flat noodles – phat sie eww – coated in black bean sauce and piled with fresh veggies. An astounding display of culinary delights that stretched for a mouth-watering mile.”

Jeff Funnekotter of the Big City Blog tells us about the Albert Cuyp market - a Street market in Amsterdam that started in 1904.

“The characters are real-life, seasoned market-hawkers - mostly very friendly, some gruff, always authentic and fair (this is not one of those markets where you haggle).”

Charlotte Beauvoisin of Kampala days – diary of a muzungu writes about two markets in Uganda, in the Human Safari and all its smells and in Justice in the balancing act

“Saturday evening leaving the Old Taxi Park is as crazy an African scene as you’re going to encounter. It’s exhausting. People call at you from all sides, traffic – bikes, boda bodas and matatus – come at you from every direction simultaneously. People and vehicles groan under the collective weight of their wares and purchases.”

At any time, there is as much to discover in our own world as in another part of the world. And yet, we yearn to travel and to explore territories we know little about outside of where we live. What then? You come back to where you started and find that more than anything else, you’ve discovered a way of looking that you did not know before!

Hoping that readers will share their own experiences of the marketplace, their discoveries and their insights!

Thanks to all those who’ve contributed to this Blog Carnival! The posts included here are from participants in the Lonely Planet Blogsherpa programme that includes the Best Travel Bloggers from around the world selected by Lonely Planet. Do check out the  previous Blog Carnival hosted by Nina Fuentes on the theme Has traveling changed you. The next Blog carnival will be announced here soon!

Read about:
Fish market at Sasoon Docks
Flower market in Mumbai
Udaipur City
Bollywood Posters

Wandering Educators

Wandering Educators is a global community of informed, engaged educators who share their travel experiences and dialogue about international education and travel.

Recently, Indian Bazaars was featured on their website – an interview asking questions about how travellers can get the most out of visiting Indian Bazaars, how travellers can give back when in India and tips for visiting Bazaars with children. I would like to thank Dr.Jessie Voigts for asking us. This is the link to the interview : Exploring colourful Indian Bazaars at Wandering Educators.com

Book Review at 'A Traveler's Library'

"Is there a book that captures your people, your culture?" I was asked by a fellow blogger from the Lonely Planet BlogSherpa program. R.K.Narayan's writing came to my mind and I chose to review 'The Writerly Life' as A Book for Travelers to South India for Vera Marie Badertscher.

Her website 'A Traveler's Library' contains a great collection of travel literature that includes fiction and non-fiction, biographies, histories and novels. Vera has gathered from different places books and movies that continue to inspire and inform travel. It's a library that gives in plenty, takes nothing in return!!

World Travel & the Lonely Planet Bloggers

What is World travel all about? One way of looking at this is to believe that there are two kinds of people – those who want to travel the world and those who do not. The ones who read, think and dream about travelling the world eventually do travel the world and each time they are in a new place, they are ensconced in a world of discovery and delight. The ones who say they are not the traveller kind, also do travel somewhere, sometime.

I had always been contented to live in my own little world. When I travelled outside of my country for the first time, it was to go away from India for a period of study. More than anything else, the travel brought the realisation that moving away for a while means creating a lens from which you see your own world so differently. You can zoom in and zoom out and look at it this way and that. The lines of vision increase with every stepping back and most times you return to your point of origin with a deeper understanding than ever before.

So, whether you love travel or you don’t, whether you have dreamt of seeing the world or you haven’t, if world travel comes your way, do give it a thought. And, before you take the final leap, look up the Squidoo lens created by the Lonely Planet bloggers. It may be just the lens you need to make the final choices, to be at the right place at the right time.

This is a collection of travel writing from all over the world brought into one webpage by those who love to travel and those who never thought world travel could change them forever. These are feeds from current articles on each of their blogs that appear also on lonelyplanet.com’s destination pages as part of LP’s BlogSherpa program. Its been wonderful to be a part of the Lonely Planet program because as we share our thoughts each day, we learn so much more than we would on our own. So, welcoming you to join us!

Click here for the Squidoo lens : World Travel by the Lonely Planet Bloggers