La Boqueria, Barcelona > Reviews (7)

Situated on La Rambla, the busy main drag in the heart of Barcelona, this wonderful market was like an oasis when I visited early one morning!

My boyfriend and I were staying in a small apartment just off of La Rambla (with a great company called Loving Barcelona - who I would review if they were listed but really recommend anyway!). Having arrived on Sunday afternoon ready for a cosy night in our apartment with bottle of wine and tasty local cusine, we forgot that in a still fairly religious country Sunday opening would be very much different to ours, and the local supermarkets closed!

Hungry and grumpy we were delighted when we re-read our guide book to find that this amazing market was less than 5 minutes walk away, and opened at 8 the next morning. Surrendering our night in to the wilder and far more noisy atmosphere of La Rambla, we decided to make the market our first stop the next day, and I am soooo glad that we did.

Firstly this place is huge! There are various other markets in the various areas of Barcelona (including one set up specially for Brits apparently), but this one by far exceeds anything I have seen there or elsewhere.

Open from roughly 8 in the morning until late (depending on when most of the produce is sold, earlier than normal on Sundays), it is full of stalls selling fresh produce, from fruit and vegetables, to meat, fish and cheese.

The fresh fish market (a small number of stalls at the very centre)is particularly amazing, although I have to admit that our lack of Spanish let us down a little here! Proudly buying what I thought were sardines I later cooked a wonderful meal of what turned out to be the most salty of anchovies (or very similar), not quite what I had had in mind!

My best buy? A kilo of strawberries for 50 cents! Bargain!

There are also small shops within the market selling sundries such as herbs, spices, toilet rolls - and more importantly lots of wine and sangria! There is also, towards the back of the market, a really great coffee seller - the woman who was there that morning spoke little English and we VERY little Spainsh, but we were able to taste and smell all the different beans and coffee that she had and so make a decision - she really made our morning - and the fresh coffee we had for the rest of week really made our holiday!

The language barrier did not seem to be too much of a problem. Armed with our phrasebook we were able to buy most things without making too much of a fool of ourselves, and found many people as eager to practice their English on us as we were to practice our Spanish - even when the language was an issue the majority of people were very patient with us , and very friendly and helpful.

I would recommend a trip here to anybody, even if you are not staying self-catering - just a walk through the market is a great experience - but if you are cooking for yourself this is a great place to stock up the fridge, and for incredibaly reasonable prices, much more enjoyable than the large supermarket further up the road with it's long queues and grumpy tourists!

Fresh fruit and veg was very cheap, and although the meat and cheese seemed more pricey this seemed to be the case around the city, wherever we shopped.

Perhaps one of the best things to recommend this place is that it was not simply full of tourists on a day out (and yes I am quite aware that I am a tourist and therefore making a mute point!), but you can tell that this market is used by many local people, and local restaurants, and this alone speaks highly for the regard given in Barcelona to it's produce.

Obviously prices and produce will change with the season, we went in early July if that gives any indication to those who know better than me about seasonal changes.

The atomsphere at the market , even at it's busiest times, (we went back more than once, and this became one of our favourite places in the city - I am a BIT of a foodie!), is a far cry from La Rambla outside, free from the hustlers and street artists and full of people who just love food! I know from a couple of the other reviews that people have mentioned the petty crime aspect. This is always a problem on La Rambla, and for tourists in general, but I have to say that we had no experience of this, and the market itself felt very safe and friendly.

Getting there from any part of the city is fairly easy, halfway down La Rambla and right by the Metro stop Liceu, and 5 minutes walk from the Placa de Catalunya where there is another station and many buses also stop.

I have rated this place average in family freindly as I think it would a great place to take kids, but better early in the day before the crowds set in. Also in has no real amenities that might be neccessary, such as public toilets, changing facilities etc.