We have been passing by these rows of huge white tents in front of the municipal government building at least twice a day without going in. We always wonder what was inside. When my colleagues took me back from the group dinner midnight, Joao casually mentioned that it was “the market” that had been under renovation for quite a while.

After the expat gathering at the CLIB yesterday, another parent texted me about the Market. It seems today is a good day to go, and I went there twice.

On my way to the morning run, I passed by the market. It was about 10:30. The rest of the city was quiet but when I got close to the market you saw many people, especially elder women pulled very tall two wheeled luggage carts full of groceries. Some had two. It was an extremely busy scene.

There was a tent for breads and snacks, a tent for seafood, a tent for meat, a tent for flowers, a tent for live fowls and other small animals, a tent for processed foods, and two extra-long tents for vegetables. Outside there were numerous stands of vegetables and flowers. I checked the price, everything was cheaper. I figure today must be busy because of the big meal ahead on Sunday, when the market does not open. However, obviously I have been buying groceries at wrong places.

After the morning run, while I explored the western half of the creek trial, I dragged William to the Market.

With help of my friend’s instructions, we asked for the lunch menu. They have one waitress who speaks English. We ordered two plates of the day, one with sorted meat and one fried fish. Another customer assured me the friend fish was great while he was leaving. My fried fish disk includes stir-fried rise, potato salad, and greens. The dish comes with water for William and a jar of red wine for me. We also ordered a lovely displayed glass of juice and a coffee. Although we paid twelve euros.

When we were about to finish our meals, we saw an old man coming in with a transformer toy in his hand along some other items he was selling. He tested his loud speaker a few times. What’s interesting was that he tried to sell his transformer to all other customers but not to William who was the only kid in this tent. We figured he must have gotten that toy from a Chinese store and he had assumed we were owners of a Chinese store. After all, one of William’s Chinese friend at CLIB told him that every Chinese in Braga has a store.

Late afternoon, we went to the Museu D. Diogo de Sousa which was about five minutes away from our apartment by foot. It’s another place that we always thought we should go but didn’t get a chance.

On our way, we heard the loud drumb beats from the direction of the Se. We ignored it for a bit, then the sound came closer and closer. So we stopped to take a look. It’s a parade with a large crowd. Later, our friend told us it was also part of the boy scouts, escoteiros. The whole day Saturday they would be working on this religious activity.

We got to the museum at around 4:30 pm, with about an hour to browse before it closed at 5:30. The person at the ticket counter told us there would be a multi-culture event at 5:30.

The museum was smaller than it appeared from outside, with only four small rooms of exhibitions. The items were kept nicely and arranged in informative manner with a focus of artifacts from neighbouring regions in the Roman periods.

Besides some precious artifacts, I had fun looking at some realistically built models of housing complexes of Roman time. There was bathhouse and a training camp.

On the outer wall of what appeared as a training compound, I saw some carefully painted graffiti. You can tell Portugal was emotional in regards to its roman time history. No wonder you see so many graffiti all over Portugal.

The main building of the museum was constructed on top of a roman ruin site, which can be viewed in the basement. This is the third roman ruin set I saw in Portugal; second for William.

On the wall surrounding the ruin, there was an exhibition in which an artist gave cameras to children and had them take random pictures. The idea is that children are pure and they would loose their innocence by age 12. This reminds me of a talk I went to in Berkeley by a meditation leader hosted by an after-life survivors group.

People started gathering for the multi-cultural event at around 5:00. There were people dancing in the courtyard of the museum and setting up food stands, like you would expect from an international show in the US. Food tasting was offered by country, Iran, Ukraine, etc. Portuguese food was the best, with bifanas, wine and all kinds of juices. We ran into our good friend Serjio again. He told us we missed really good green soup.

I was disappointed that I did not see many Chinese at the event. I think I saw a couple of faces that looked like from eastern Asia, but couldn’t find them when I looked around again.

Serjio said they would send out notice to all University accounts, which I did not have. He said he would let me know how to sign up for notices from the city on similar events.