Day 135: Mahane Yehuda Market

Mahane Yehuda Market is a mostly open air market selling baked goods, vegetables, fruit, fish, and meat. Kosher signs dangle above some stands. Coffee shops have sprung up in between mountains of freshly scrubbed veggies and the oddball souvenir shop. It’s a great market. Smaller than we expected (but then again, after five years of markets in South Korea, it’s hard to be objective) but still a great time to walk through. We stopped to get a small bag of olives and saw something leafy wrapped up. I asked what it was.

“Yaprak!” He said and motioned for me to try one.

“But what is it?” I asked again, picking one up to try.

“Yaprak! It’s Yaprak.” He seemed baffled that I wanted to know more. Andrew laughed at me. I googled it. Yaprak = stuffed grape leaves.

We walked around the market, up and down the back streets and found a plethora of awesome street art. I meant to ask Meidad what some of the Hebrew translated to, but forgot. If anyone knows, please fill me in!

Andrew spotted the eyes after I was photographing the mustached mouth. “You should make a diptych!” He suggested. (I think he was secretly excited that he remembered what a diptych was) “Brilliant! I didn’t even see the eyes!” I got super excited and went to work- on my iphone, so if you haven’t seen the diptych yet, just click on the Instagram feed to your right to see it! (It’s one of my recent favorites!)

And then we made our way “home” to our wonderful couchsurfer hosts.