As you can see, tourism has had a big impact on the market. It's still a remarkable sight, but it also becomes increasingly clear this is a weird way to trade things. When the idea was selling stuff by paddling your boat to waterside houses, makes perfect sense. Now it's switched largely to getting tourists on boats, paddling them up and down the river while ladies on other boats sell them things. This makes very little sense, as both buyer and seller have to move from their natural, land-based habitat onto boats to conduct their business. Also, as you can see, trading this way causes boat gridlock, as you can imagine. To use a Monroe example, imagine if instead of stores, you had to drive up and down Route 111 and buy and sell with drivers coming in the opposite direction. As you haggled over the price and wrapped up your merchandise, there's be quite a pileup of honking cars from behind.

But the clearest indication that the market has gone off track is the photo of the house selling tourist kitsch. Now the roles have completely reversed, as the buyers get in the boat and get paddled to the sellers, who sit in the house. So I'd still go because it's so photogenic, but don't think too much about the commercial logic of a floating market, because there isn't any.