Market Place and Tapas

On Wednesday I went on a field trip for my anthropology class. My anthro teacher did her dissertation in Spain living there for a year and so she was very knowledgeable but we did also have a local guide. The market was in a great walled in court yard with the sea creature section in the middle and everything else on the walls. At the first stall we stopped at we tried blood sausage, some other kind of sausage, goat cheese, and sheep cheese. At the second one we tried a kind of ham called pata negra, the stall worker cut it off the bone right before handing it to us. The last sausage stall we stopped at had a lot of different interesting variations of sausage, like one with pine nuts and one that was bright red and a little spicy that our guild told us had a spice in it that was like a stronger version of paprika. We then had 20 minutes to wander around the rest of the market before meeting to go to lunch. While wandering around our teacher would explain some things to us about all the different kinds of shell fish and she would talk to the stall workers to get further explanation. One of them asked where we were from and when our teacher told him America he gave us pieces of smoked tuna to try that was apparently smoked the same way they did before refrigeration. We saw all sorts of different things one of the many being eels. At one of the booths with eels we stopped and were taking pictures of the eels. The booth worker looked over at the guy in the stall next to him and said something in Spanish then jerked his hand really quickly. It turns out that he had a string attached to one of the eels and it jerked with the jerk of his hand. We all had a good laugh.

Lunch was at a restaurant right outside of the market. The first tapas they brought out were fried shrimp patties. The second was not an oyster but something kind of similar but from really far down in the ocean from what I understood of our waiter. It was fried and when cut open grey and gooey. The third was fried cubes of fresh dog fish; it did not taste fishy at all. The last dish served was a rice dish with different shell fish in it and some turmeric spice. It was a good time.

After that I wandered around Cadiz with some friends eating yet more gelato (Donut and Twix flavored) and right before boarding the ship Chocolate con Churros, which is a very thick hot chocolate served with a sort of fried straw shaped bread that you dip in the hot chocolate.

Back on the ship we sadly waved goodbye to Espania.