I took this photo in Barcelona, Spain in 2009. This ended up being one of my favorite photos of the trip.
I think part of the appeal is how differently the eggs are displayed and sold there vs. here in the US. Here, eggs are always in cartons, stacked neatly, and tucked into refrigerators. You just wouldn’t come across a giant mound of eggs, piled all higgledy-piggledy like this, in a US market. It is also fun to see the different sizes of eggs together: the smaller brown chicken eggs, and the larger pale eggs, which I believe are duck eggs. (I realized that I could just make out the sign, and for a moment was trying to figure out why it didn’t say “pato” for duck. But this was Barcelona, so most of the signs were in Catalan. I can just make out that the sign says “ous d’anec.”)
I also liked how the photo captured the moment and the atmosphere of the market. It was early morning, and I passed through on my way to the conference I was attending. Later in the day, it would be full of people and bustling. Just then, however, it was quiet.
This week’s friday foto finder theme is “eggs.” I do have quite a lot of eggs in my photo library, so once again, the difficulty lay in choosing which to serve up. To see what eggs others have on their menus, pay a visit to the fff blog.
collecting tokens 
higgledy-piggledy! That’s a phrase that should be used more often, and a perfect description of this mound of eggs. Also, bonus points for the puns in the epilogue.
It used to be similar on markets here. You could even buy loose eggs in the shop once upon a time. But EU regulations (i guess they’re the culprit) forbid that nowadays. Or maybe it’s our own government.
The photo is fascinating. I can understand why you like it so much.
When I was a little girl my family used to buy eggs directly from a farmer who had a small roadside stand. The eggs, all brown ones, would be piled up like these eggs were. We’d stand there and pick out which ones & how many that we wanted. Hadn’t thought of that in years. Thanks for the memory.
Wonderful! I had no idea eggs were ever sold in stacks like that. I wonder if anyone ever accidentally disrupts the whole arrangement. :|
I love “higgledy-piggledy” too. Or is that heggledy-peggledy?
I can just remember, in my long-ago youth buying half a dozen eggs at the corner shop and taking them home in a brown paper bag. Goes back to the days of unbottled milk and unwrapped bread being delivered to the home.
I remember the piles of differently sized eggs in Barcelona markets. Thanks for the reminder. And for the rainbows!