Houten Market

Today is market day in Houten.   And the square at the Rond is full of market stalls, and shoppers.

   

The market is similar to the one held in Swanley, Kent, U.K. in that there are the usual clothes, telephone gadgets, bag stalls but there the similarity ends.

The first difference is that you do not have to fight for a park which is the situation in Asda's carpark, Swanley    Here you just ride your bicycle to the market and park it where there is a space.   Easy.    Of course not so easy on the return journey when you try and balance a small tree on the front or back of your bicycle.   Or in our case, 15 bags of coffee pods which were placed in one very large bag.  

The second difference is the range of food stalls for cheese, fish and bread.   All great favourites of Dutch people.   As well as flowers of course.  

The first stop was to admire the range of plants and flowers in the plant stall.   No purchases here though.  

 The next stop was to try out some of the vast ranges of cheeses.    We purchased a young cheese, a blue vein cheese and one with caraway seeds in it.   And they are delicious.

 We stopped at the fish stall so that Walter could have his raw salted herring, with chopped onions.   Straight down the throat.   Not for me though.    Too fresh and fishy.  

 The usual range of clothing on sale.

 These pineapples looked good, but after eating fresh pineapples in Australia we were not tempted to purchase one that had obviously travelled a great distance.

 More of the twisted sculptured look.    The trunks of a few ficus trees have been plaited to give a most unusual effect.   I did not look at the price.   I can imagine they were expensive.    No purchases here either.

And on the subject of the cows/steers being kept in the open barn.   The ones that were crowded into small pens.  And looked very dirty.   Well I learnt that they are waiting to be slaughtered and will end up as meat in the butcher's shop in old Houten.    No wonder they were all resting!