What is quite interesting here are the little stores that people have in their houses. There are the pulperias (like kiosks) but then there are also the private people selling some groceries or meals from their living rooms. Some people simply put up a grill and a stand next to their houses on the street and sell meals that they prepare outside. Sometimes it is difficult to make out if it is a plce where you can buy something or not because people here have a tendency of having their doors open and a couple of people sitting outside on the street watching TV so it looks like you could just walk in. I know that very close to where I live there is a place that sells some very nicely cooked local food but I haven’t dared to try and find the house out of fear of walking into the wrong one…

The other day I went to the municipal market in Granada. I had bugged my Nice-housemate about this for a couple of weeks and finally we found a suitable day. At the market there are mainly fruits, vegetables, movies, music and clothes at very low prices. In size and selection it did not come close to the municipal market in Masaya but it was still impressive. Since I went together with my Nica-housemate the vendors did not totally rip me off. I bought some tomatoes, some cucumber, oranges and pithaya (a purple funny looking fruit that is used a lot to make juices here and turns your tongue purple). The fruits and vegetables sold at the market are obviously from the surrounding areas and it was interesting to experience the difference in taste and texture from the foods that you buy in the supermarket. The oranges I bought at the market had an unusual high amount of seeds and suddenly I realized that the oranges I´ve been buying my whole life most propably are manipulated (Im a supermarket girl that has plucked on or two apples from a tree in my days but that is more or less it for my experiences with fruits directly from nature).
Just like the market in Masaya, the market in Grananda was messy and a bit dirty, so when I bought my last fruits I was looking forward to leave the market and continue to our next stop, a French/German bakery in a hidden away alley next to the market, to buy some sourdough bread. Yummy! But my housemate had other plans. She said that she needed to eat something. We dove into the middle of the market where there were a lot of  people selling the typical meals such as Nacatamal, Vigoron and Gallo Pinto, only to mention a few things (another time I will go into the typical food of Nicaragua). We sat down outside of a little hole in the wall (literally) with a stove. They had put a table and a bench i the narrow hall way. I looked skeptically at the place… this was not a place where I would ever chose to go if I would have been alone but I trusted my housemates judgment. There was already a man sitting there and we sat down next to him. We ordered Gallo Pinto (fried beans and rice) with fried cheese, tortilla and scrambled eggs; absolutely delicious and more than filling. We sat for a while just relaxing before we paid (30 cordobas each, about 1 euro).

After this I went to work with two bags full of nice, fresh foods and a full stomach.