Marché aux Puces de St-Ouen

After yesterday's rain, today was bright and clear but much cooler (hooray!), so I set out this morning for the huge flea market near Porte de Clignancourt on the north side of Paris. It is just inside the périphérique, in the department of Seine-St-Denis where the racailles live. (That was a Nicolas Sarkozy joke. Also, Autocorrect wants "racailles" to be "racial lens," which is painfully apt.) Actually, inside the Marché aux Puces de St-Ouen, as the flea market is properly known, I mostly saw and heard other tourists--Americans and Germans, judging by the accents. Plus some French people seriously engaged in decorating their homes with the antique furniture and accessories that make up a huge part of the huge market. 

Neither my budget nor my suitcase would accommodate an antique chair but I had hours of fun walking around looking at everything and eavesdropping on the merchants' conversations. This flea market is kind of a fancier and denser version of the one in Canton, Texas. No Beanie Babies or Fiesta ware but lots of fine jewelry, vintage clothes, antique books and prints, china and silver, and of course a healthy dollop of miscellaneous bits and bobs: watches that might or might not be working, old postcards, fountain pens, beads, toys, etc. Instead of being spread out over acres of land it is all contained within a series of buildings, stalls, alleys, and squares. I stayed for way too long just looking around because it just goes on and on and on! In the end I bought very little: some postcards that I plan to use on the cover of my scrapbook from this trip, and a teeny yellow pitcher emblazoned with the Ricard logo. I must have been thinking of Canton because the pitcher actually looks a lot like Fiesta ware. 

By the time I came back it was after 3 pm. St-Ouen is all the way on the other end of the #4 Métro line, about as far from Cité U. as you can get and still be in Paris. So getting there and back means riding for a little while. Back in my room I did my nails (walking in the rain in Caen yesterday wreaked havoc on my pedicure) and talked to Daniel on Skype. He will be here in only 6 days. I can hardly wait!

Tomorrow will be jam-packed: class, a meeting, other class, other meeting, then back to Shakespeare & Co. for Adam Biles's appearance at the Grey Cats launch event. I'd better rest up. À bientôt!