Goa – street shopping – Mapusa Friday Market

Swarm of chattering people, colourful shop-shades, stalls of glittering junk-jewelleries,  chilled lime-soda shops, customer-shopkeeper debating furiously to come to a common price…..were some of the common sights that we came across during the visit to the Mapusa friday market!! In Aril’15 my husband and me along with two of our friends planned for a weekend get-away to Goa and as expected it turned out to be one of the  unforgettable road-trips!!
Since, we had almost three days in Goa we decided, that along with the usual itinerary of beaches and shacks we would also explore the local markets that we had heard so highly about. We chose the Mapusa friday market among other options. we had heard that the market had really good variety of pottery, plastic-ware, fruits and fresh vegetables.

We chose the afternoon slot for shopping and we could locate the market without much difficulties.
The first thing that I noticed when I entered the market were the innumerable colourful umbrella shades that were lined up under the scorching afternoon sun. The place was livid with its antiques and was looking like a perfect  street-shopping destination!!

We had entered the market from the vegetable-fruit section. As far as your eyes would take, there were fresh colourful fruits-vegetables everywhere. Among the various varieties available the few that drew my attention were the perfect ripe mangoes, dragon fruits, kokum, fresh tamarind. There were also innumerable stalls full of aromatic spices.

Refreshed by the sight and aroma of the beautiful spices we proceeded to the next section. This was easily any woman’s perfect day-dream. Scores of shops full of shoes, clothes, junk-jewellers. I could actually feel the money in my pocket craving to come out and be spent.:)!! I wasted no more time and approached the nearest footwear shop. The shop had some really pretty footwares on display. I enquired about the price range and it was 100-350(INR) for most of them. My eyes fell upon a perfect set of wedges and after haggling for a while bought that for 200 INR(Actually, I was really happy with myself and I felt that the product was really worth the price.)

After this,  I moved on to the next section which was the pottery section. I decided that I would not bargain here as I  really appreciate the art of pottery and I don’t mind paying few bucks extra for for this exclusive art which is getting confined to fewer artisans day-by-day . There were really friendly aged-ladies sitting in the individual shops with lots of pottery products in the shop. I had a look around and I bought a glass shade mounted on a very artistic clay stand. Satisfied with the purchase I moved ahead and noticed a small artificial flower shop.

The artificial florals were  pretty affordable. I chose a beautiful bunch of pink flowers and paid around 180INR for it.
It was almost 1:30pm and the scorching heat of the sun was getting difficult to bear. We decided to take a quick ‘niboo-pani'(lemon soda) break. The 10 minutes break was really soothing and I could feel myself being re-energised.
Next on the list was ‘jewel-hunt’. There were lots of shops selling junk-jewelleries and I decided to take my chances and went on with it. This section appeared a bit over-priced but since, I had an approximate idea of the price of the knick-knacks fortunately I was able to strike out a good deal for myself…:)

It was almost 3:00pm when we decided to call it a day and proceeded for lunch. Close to 4 hours that we spent shopping was actually an experience in itself. It has been one of my favourite street-shopping experience so far!!