Cheap Dork

(photo by PACOBP)

I'm a dork. A cheap dork. We went to El Rastro this weekend. It's said to be Europe's largest flea market. It started in the middle ages and has over 3500 stalls.

(photo by subcomandanta)

It's open year round every Sunday morning. You can buy just about anything there. Lots of imported stuff from India & Africa. Cheaply made tourist crap-ola. Second-hand junque. The old stuff is what catches my eye.

(photo by ma vie en rouge)

Here comes the part where I'm a cheap dork. I was Specifically looking for a vintage seltzer bottle because I'd seen them there before, and I've seen them all over blogland in photos of Paris flea markets that people drool over. AND I think they look cool.

(photo from Buenos Aires San Telmo flea market by fakeamerica)

So I find a guy in one of the side plazas that is selling a bunch of old stuff. While Vino is asking him about some really old Italian daggers (expensive, but cool!) I spy a crate of 6 seltzer bottles, one of them blue with 8 sides. It looked almost exactly like this one from Ruby Lane except that the writing was in Spanish. I would post the photo, but it's copyrighted. If the link is no longer active when you read this, just know that it is VERY COOL, and originally $125, on sale for $95. Our friend who brought a camera with her had no battery left, so I don't even have proof of the one I found. None of these are even my photos that I'm posting. Loser.

So we ask the guy how much and he says 15 Euros, which is around $21. I was prepared to pay 10 Euros, but the guy wouldn't budge. So we walked away. Apparently he wasn't desperate to sell that day because he couldn't have cared less. And we kept walking. Now I'm wishing I hadn't been so cheap.

(photo by mazingerin)

We're moving back to the States for a couple of years - this week. That was my last chance for a while. One of these days I'm going to learn some type of lesson from this...