“How many fish markets is it reasonable to visit on our honeymoon?” I asked my husband-to-be. “Three or four,” he answered, and I nodded. “A day,” he continued. This is why I married him. It’s also why we spent the first morning of our honeymoon, a mere 36 hours after our wedding, wandering the fish souk in Dubai.
Fish markets make an exciting travel stop for food lovers because they offer a glimpse into the local food culture and a peek at the everyday routines of the local food industry. If you have a strangely-timed layover (there’s not much else to do at six in the morning) or a weird case of jetlag (still awake at 5:15 a.m.?), the market’s early-morning hours may actually be convenient. At 5:15 a.m., when we arrived, most of the indoor stalls were set up, but an endless parade of fresh fish on ice was still being unloaded from vans, sorted, auctioned, and set up for display. Arriving this early is not a necessity (certainly, you’d get a great view of what’s going on arriving an hour later), but it’s interesting to catch the bustle and behind-the-scenes bargaining that goes on before the fish make it to the stalls.
