Our first booth to visit was the pastry and bakery maker. All we could do was smell the wonderful aromas of fresh baked fruit pies and new loaves of bread. Heaven for we 3 carb lovers! We had a great time talking to the owners and chatting with other customers. 
Pickled eggs anyone?!
Wonderful jams, maramalades, lemon & lime curd, jellies and fudge here. This booth was very popular with the locals.
It is the end of the season here for flower gardens, much to our dismay. This nurseryman still had some stock to sell and also a few garden pieces. We talked about how to get the concrete pieces home, but no luck!
Vegetables still abound, with the fall root veggies startign to appear. Squash were also entering the markets. Many homes had their own gardens, but the markets and farm stands were still doing a booming business.
Even though my 2 friends are not into sewing, they still enjoyed looking through the trims, laces and ribbons with me. Most were the same as home, just a higher price and displayed differently. Still interesting to look!
All of these are buttons. Each kind and size is in its own clear acrylic tube, easy to pull from the pile and then purcdhase individually.
We always had Sue to try out the very weird foods that were offered. I think these were winkles, timy little sea snails. No thank you!
These pigeons were for sale across from the winkles. They sure have enough of them over here!
And finally our whelks and winkles! We found a lot of new seafood choices that we don't have in the Pacific Northwest. But... many that we do have too. After talking to many of the shop owners in varied types of businesses, we discovered the same main theme. They are all working much harder to make less money. Hmm-mmm that really sounded familar. We noticed that there were the same empty shops and bankrupcies advertised in wondows. Lots of liquidations. They are probably a few tough years behind us in England as their real estate hasn't crashed yet. Many were quitting office jobs to start dream jobs such as opening their own shops, becoming bakers and cake decorators. Many felt that it was time to find the quality in life instead of working day and night, missing family life and things they loved to chase the "money carrot". Just too elusive in today's world. Another young man we met had walked and stowed away on a ship to get from Ethiopia to England. He felt blessed to have a job, as they were hard to find, and knew that he would never see his family again because he would never have the money to get back to Ethiopia. Stories were many and often sad, but there was always hope. The same hope felt the world around.
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