Mercado Central

Located at the end of Avenida Curitiba near Praça Raul Soares is the Mercado Central (7 a.m.–6 p.m. Mon.–Sat. and 7 a.m.–noon Sun.), a large indoor market that carries everything from fruits and vegetables to local cheese, cachaça, sweets, meat, and spices. You’ll also find handcrafted furnishings, health food stores, healing-herb vendors, chickens, roosters, and dogs. The many dive bars offer a taste of local boteco cuisine (a long-standing B.H. tradition) along with cold beer. It’s a bit of a madhouse, and you’re sure to get lost inside, but it’s a terrific slice of B.H. life. Note that prices on pots, pans, and handcrafted items are usually better in the small towns around Minas from which they come.