March 14, 2023 - Cascine Market

Already one month today since we left Dieppe for our trip to Florence. A little over 2 weeks left before we head back home. The are announcing a big snow storm back home for tonight and tomorrow with between 20-25 cm forecast. Much better here with the temperature in the high teens.

We woke up this morning to partly cloudy skies but since they were announcing a 90 % chance of rain, we donned our rain pants and rain jackets before heading out to the Cascine market. It took us about a half hour to walk there so not too bad. Once we arrived, we saw booth upon booth of stuff. There were booths of junk, purses, belts, clothes both new and second hand, vegetables, cheeses as well as food trucks. Some of the stalls looked like bins at Frenchys with everyone digging in. We walked for about a km looking at booths on both sides before turning around and we didn’t go to the end. 

There are booths like this along the road for over a KM.

We bought a multigrain bread for tomorrow's breakfast, a dozen artichokes for 4 euros, 2 kinds of cheese, and fresh tomatoes and I also bought a small backpack purse and 2 cushion covers. On the way back we took the tram and stopped at the central market for some speck (charcuterie). We were happy to have our rain gear when it started to rain.

While Jacques peeled the artichokes for cooking, I did my first solo outing. We wanted wine with tonight’s supper, so I went to the grocery store for mustard and yogurt for the artichoke dressing and then went to have our bottle of wine refilled. We hadn’t gone for a refill for 6 days; I didn’t want the owner to think we had gone home. I bought a liter of Chianti which we had liked a couple of weeks ago. Last week he didn’t have any left.

After I had made the dressing, we decided to go for a late afternoon snack. We walked in the opposite direction that we normally do, to a bakery we had visited during one of our geocaching outing. After coffee and a sweet we walked back following the outside wall of the city. It’s a good thing Jacques was there because I would be still walking but in the wrong direction.

We couldn't decide which desert to take so we took 3 to share.

After supper we went for a short walk to a brewery we had read about. But when we got there they do not make their own beer but buy it from other breweries. Jacques did buy 2 IPA type beers before coming back home. The interesting part is that the beers are on tap and they fill and cap the beer in cans for you to take home.