Our Paris Adventure: Day Five (17 February)

Today was a day that I have been looking forward to for a very long time—my first trip to a Parisian flea market. Last time we were in Paris, I was overwhelmed with everything the city had to offer and never made it to any of the city’s big three flea markets. This time I wanted to go to at least one, and Bob was up for a peek too, so I chose Porte de Vanves—the smallest of the three, and the one that sounded most my style: more knick-knack-y than antique-y and more friendly than stuffy. On our way to the flea market, I snapped this photo looking down the metro platform:

The light in the tunnel is the next station—that’s how small Paris is. From some platforms, you can even see the people standing on the next platform! Very odd. Although the area around the Porte de Vanves metro station was extremely quiet, we soon found the market and it was perfect—exactly the flea market of my Parisian dreams.
A great bustling, but not pushy, mixture of people, wares, and prices, I came away with a few trinkets and even managed to bargain in French, which was especially satisfying. There was a great variety of merchandise on offer






and this being Paris, some stallholders dug into a typically French snack.
I wanted these chairs for our patio,
and liked how this vendor used the base of this tree to display his goods.
The atmosphere of the market was indeed friendly, with stallholders teasing customers with smiles all around. Add in this could-he-be-any-more-French? musician, and it was a perfect morning.
After the market, we decided to have another walk through Luxembourg Gardens, this time on a sunny day. What a difference! The park was positively packed with people basking in the warm sun and we soon found that our winter coats were much too warm for the spring weather.



One of the things that I love about big Parisian parks is the seating—tasteful, comfortable, metal chairs that you can move around the park as you like—the chairs somehow create a feeling of community that static benches lack. Often cited as the most beautiful park in Paris, there are indeed numerous striking sights in the park


and this sculpture gets a special mention for its creative setting:
We spent the early afternoon doing some more shopping (it was the last day of the sales, after all) and decided that the warm weather was calling out for another picnic lunch. This time we assembled our meal from some great shops

on a pedestrian street near the Eiffel Tower, with some Monoprix (I love Monoprix!) chocolate for dessert. The food looked too delicious to wait and so we finished our lunch before I remembered to take a photo, but here’s the detritus of the bread, cheese, meat, chocolate, and juice we had for lunch,
and the view that accompanied our picnic.
On our way by bus across the Seine, I caught this odd view of the Eiffel Tower magnified through part of the back window.
We took the bus to Passy, an area that we hadn’t been to before, which was filled with a lovely mixture of busy shopping streets as well as quiet residential ones.

After our day of shopping and wandering, we put our museum passes to good use and fit in a short visit to the Centre Pompidou,
one of the best modern and contemporary art spaces in Paris. Since we didn’t make it there until quite late, we only had time to take in the views from the numerous exterior escalators and platforms before agreeing that we’d have to come back tomorrow to peruse the art. We spent quite a bit of time pondering the giant video installation projected onto the open square in front of the Pompidou

before turning our attention to the city itself,
but hunger called and we answered at a brasserie where I had the ultimate in comfort food: the glorious croque madame. While a croque monsieur is a simple ham-and-cheese sandwich, Madame comes with something extra:
The egg makes the meal transcend the category of mere “sandwich,” and takes it into the realm of the perfect meal. As we sat at our sidewalk brasserie table, Bob and I quickly realized that many passers-by were coveting my meal, saying things like, “That looks good,” “I want that,” and “Oh, look at that delicious croque madame!” Even the simple life is good in Paris.