The St. Nicholas Market

These are displays from one of my favorite things about Galway - the Saturday St. Nicholas Market. The market is all day Saturday behind St. Nicholas Church in a sweet alleyway. According to local hearsay, Christopher Columbus stopped by for a prayer on his way to "Asia" in 1492 (when he sailed the ocean blue).
The market has crepes, chili, hand knit sweaters socks gloves and hats, jewelry made of wood silver glass and pottery, doughnuts, muffins, fresh fish, flowers, organic vegetables, handmade ironwork, fruit, pies, homemade apple juice, vegetarian specials, south african sausages, cheese, fruit compotes and honey----I can go on and on. I live for the Saturday market.
Yesterday was a great day because I got there around 10, pretty early, and could buy all of my vegetables early. I usually bring a backpack and fill it up with vegetables for the week - it's cheaper and tastes better than the veggies at Aldi or Dunnes. Then I make sure to get some food! Since I was there in the morning I decided to go with an apple-pecan homemade muffin and bought a white hot chocolate at Butler's Chocolate Shoppe (mixing it up! usually a mocha coffee from Cafe Express). Sigh. I bought a present and got something for free so that way I would remember Peter and Bertie and remember, "make sure you come say hello now, when you're at the market like."
One of my favorite things is the doughnut man. He has a green and white striped tent w/ his daughter and they fry doughnuts and then toss them in sugar for you. Cocoa powder or cinnamon is optional. It tastes like funnel cake a little bit, and they are delicious. The doughnut man wears a straw hat with a flat top and a band around the edge and is always singing, no matter what. If you go to the market by the end of the day, there's a 1 in 2 chance he's already drunk! In the afternoon you could probably sit and watch the levels in his pint of Guinness all afternoon as he slowly works his way to happy drunk straw hat doughnut man.
Today was a lazy day. Last night we had a Passover sedar in my apartment because my roommate Lea and our friend Jake from downstairs are Jewish and they decided they wanted to host a sedar. There were 15 of us and we made huge quantities of food and had maybe 10 bottles of wine. It was so lovely, we cleaned and cooked all afternoon, Lea and Jake said a couple of prayers and we passed around herbs and charoset and horseradish and salt water--the boys from downstairs even put on collared shirts and ties! Or a sweater instead of a tie. It was all very adorable. Lea made matzoh ball soup, we were all very proud of her. We went out for some drinks afterwards, it was a great celebration!
In general though, I am getting homesick. I miss everyone terribly, especially because Mom left. I had been seeing my friend Liz almost every 2 or 3 weeks since I came over and I miss the girls from FU TERRIBLY as well. I had to call Sarah today. Sorry Mom I will give you $$ for that phone call. Anyway, I miss everyone at home. I will see the Carrolls at Jess's graduation and the Strahles at Jenn's wedding and I am so excited. Watch out, I am a professional drinker of Guinness now.
love. me.