I chose to come to Europe for so long so I can really savor and experience the lifestyle here: the long lunches, the after-dinner cappuccinos, the fresh food stalls in market squares and the ringing church bells every hour.
Adventurous eaters should try one of the mutton stalls near the square's center, where everything from sheep's brain to skewered heart is sold.
This Madison Avenue of markets opened in 1960 and now comprises about 100 blue chip boutiques in civilized stalls on the square of an old church.
It is a clear, cold winter's morning in Rome, and on the cobblestones of one of the city's historic squares, stall owners are selling flowers and fruit and cheeses and much else.
I got up and out at sunrise and spent the early part of the day painting while everyone was setting up market stalls in the square.
The best place to feel the city's true pulse, though, is in the other Cancún: downtown, in the tangle of mostly tourist-free squares, market stalls and shiny new developments offering their own destination-worthy nightspots, shops and restaurants.
As he trawled the stalls at the Union Square Greenmarket one sunny morning, he explained how honey transforms onions agrodolce, a sweet-sour Italian recipe.
Christmas also brings street stalls in the city square selling buñuelos, a fried sweet sprinkled with cinnamon, served in an unglazed pottery bowl that you are supposed to throw over your shoulder, making a wish as it breaks.
It was market day when I arrived, and I threaded my way through the stalls on the main square to get to the town museum, where a small permanent exhibition of photographs, documents and other material on Mahler opened in 1986.
They pluck and saw their instruments in the centre of a square of stalls selling chutneys and organic highland beef and the world's original tattie scone wrap.
