On our first weekend in Italy, my father took us to the open-air Sunday Market in Pratola Serra.Here, in the USofA, you can usually find a pretty decent outdoor market; usually these are farmers' markets, with lots of local fruits and veggies, as well as locally made products, like jams, honey, pies, cookies, breads, pastries, etc.
In Italy, every single town, village, and city has a market (even my mother's grandparents mountain village, consisting of maybe 500 year-round residents, has a weekly market). But in Italy, the market isn't a nice place to go on Saturday morning and get a cup of coffee and scone, some fresh veggies for your week of cooking, some purple potatoes, and maybe some ridiculously expensive bacon (really, it's phenomenally tasty. It really is. Trust me). In Italy, you go to the market not only to get your local fruits and veggies, some olives from Sicily, cheese from Umbria, and meat from Parma, but also to buy a new shirt, sandals and snorkeling gear for the beach, a new espresso cup to replace the one your husband broke the other day, a serving spoon, some sexy underwear (yes, you read that right), and maybe a live chicken that you can slaughter later on in the week (Italians really like fresh food).In other words, the market is where you go to buy your stuff. All your stuff.
There are supermarkets in Italy, but mostly in the big cities. And the smaller towns have alimentari, but those mostly have the staples to supplement the weekly market trip.
The market is where things happen.If you ever go to Italy, seek out the local markets - we found one in Rome, so they're pretty much everywhere (I imagine France, Spain, and Portugal are similar, as well as many other Euro countries, and definitely in Asia). You can get yourself supplies for nice picnic, a complete set of coffee cups, and clothes for your next trip to the disco.
The pictures from our trip to the Pratola market are available here and in a handy slide show format here. These are some of my favorite pictures from our whole trip. Enjoy.[Quick edit: It was here that we first learned about the term etto (pl. etti). An etto is 100 grams, which comes in very handy when ordering meats and cheeses at any market. It is also a very effective word for making people think you know how to speak Italian, as it's kind of a 'locals' thing (and by local, I mean anywhere in Italy).]
