While living in Western Europe, I have noticed how cool it is to shop in open-air markets. Although both here and back in Latvia they look similar, the feeling you get while visiting them is kind of different - although I can't tell you why.
Back home I didn't really go to the market so often. Sure, we have quite a few markets in Riga and tourists especially love the Central market (which is situated in hangers for zeppelins). However, in my neighborhood there wasn't any market. As it was not on the way, I didn't go to any, just shopping in the usual supermarkets.
But both in Brussels and Amsterdam you find loads of markets in different places of the cities. Next to the CD House in Brussels where I was living for a year there was a small market every Monday morning. If I managed to wake up on time, sometimes I used to go there and buy some fresh fruits and vegetables.
Today here in Amsterdam we also did shopping in one of the street markets, this one was on Ten Katestraat. We initially wanted to go to Albert Cuyp market, which is the biggest and most known one, but saw the first one while passing by and decided to give it a try.
And it was great, of course! Not only you can really smell vegetables and fruits and buy them much cheaper than in the supermarkets, but the choice is also bigger. In the end we bought more than we wanted and needed, but still the total amount of money spent was less than we would spend in the supermarket.
Of course, for other stuff you still need to go to the supermarket, but now I will try to manage to buy vegetables and fruits in the markets much more as well as go to the special meat shops (mostly run by Turkish and Arabic people) for meat.
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