10/12 – Domingos de Mercado

Today was the day of the Sunday craft market in Alicante, we rose early, well for a Sunday anyway, and packed the car with all the essentials, it was not a very warm day – fine in the sun but in the shade it was quite cool, so we wrapped up well (well for Spain anyway, no need for a coat or anything silly like that!).

We arrived at the designated spot 15 minutes early at 9:45 and in typical Spanish style we were amongst the very first there – no need to worry about being late in Spain, some were still setting up at 11am! The setup is pretty good, the local council provide all the tables and chairs, the workmen bring them to the site and set them up at 10:00 – all you have to do is lay out the stall, which was a job for Liesl – of course! I went to put the car in a more secure space as we had just abandoned it, Spanish style in the middle of the side street, in our rush to get there on time!

By the time I returned after parking Liesl had already made her first sale! Good girl! The morning passed into the early afternoon and we had a lot of interest in her cards together with the occasional sale, more importantly both of us got the opportunity to speak Spanish to our captive audience – the other market stall holders!

Liesl spent a lot of the time talking to the Spanish niece of the stall holder next door, she felt less embarrassed at attempting her Spanish at a child rather than an adult – I listened in and she did very very well – although she would never admit it.

I had a chat to the book seller in the stall next to me, asking him whether he had read all his books and whether today was a busy market day. He said that he hadn’t read all his books (saw the funny side of my question) and that today was a very poorly attended market, of the 4 weeks that he had been coming, this was the slowest one (in terms of punters), probably because it was cooler today than it has been.

Poorly attended market or not, Liesl did remarkably well for her first week, she managed to raise enough money for us to pay for our normal weekly shop – so as far as we are concerned it was a great success!

We finally packed up at 2:15 and headed back to let Hetty out – she had crossed her legs for the whole time that we were away so we took her into Santa Pola for a walk along the beach and sea front.

Tomorrow I have offered to take a friend (Gerry of Gerry and Trisha from the “newcommers club”) to Torrevieja to try to track down some money that seems to have gone missing between the UK and Spain! Hope he has plenty of patience!

We have booked a place at a “table top sale” on Tuesday 12th December for us to hopefully sell some of the excess stuff that we have here and also to try to sell some more of Liesl’s cards.