Portugal - Mercado do Bolhao

The ground floor of Mercado do Bolhao in Porto

If something is too good to be true, it probably is. 

Even when you're on holiday.

On the suggestion of a waiter working at the restaurant we ate at last night, we checked out Mercado do Bolhao, about a 15-minute walk from where we are staying.

The "lobster tail" before we tried it

It's a food market place that has a covered courtyard filled with stalls selling fruits, vegetables, meats and seafood, as well as conservas, or tinned seafood, pastries, coffee, sandwiches and chocolate.

At one seafood stall we saw big, red plump lobster tails, which is how it was labelled. They were 5 euros each. 

Really?! Lobster tails for 5 euros only?

My aunt was so excited she wanted to buy one to try.

But when we got our small wooden prongs to poke it, we could see right away it wasn't the juicy meat of the crustacean, but instead some kind of fish cake made to look like lobster tail.

Scam of the day -- at 9.30am.

Lots of colourful fruits for sale

But we didn't let that bother us, and we bought some other food to try, like thinly sliced Iberico pork, small meat pies including wild boar and beef stew, mushrooms on toast, melted cheese, and grilled halloumi, eaten with a loaf of bread and some coffee (to combat jetlag).

We enjoyed ourselves so much, that the couple next to us were jealous the six of us could sample so many things!

The market has washrooms, though there aren't many, and there's even a piano on the third floor inviting visitors to tinkle the ivories.

Mercado do Bolhao was established in 1838, and the current building was built in 1917. What's interesting is that the market has three floors, each floor has a street entrance, as it's located on a hill. The bottom floor is the actual market, second floor has a few open stalls selling handmade jewellery, clothing, bags and ceramics, while the third floor houses three restaurants.

Some of what we ate for brunch

We were so full afterwards we weren't even hungry until around 5pm despite walking so much around Porto!