I’ve been musing a lot lately about stuff. No, not stuff stuff, things stuff; that collection of material goods we accumulate (and eventually begin to choke ourselves with) as we meander through life. Here in our minuscule Parisian lodgings we have the advantage of not having the space for a whole load of material baggage (click here to discover more advantages of living in a chic match box), though when we do have the urge to shop, we do live in one of the best cities in the world to do it in.
Sure we have all the chains and the big names, chic arcades and sprawling malls – hell even the larger train stations in Paris are being turned into soulless shopping centres designed to lure in those sensible enough to have allowed themselves ample time to catch their trains. That’s not really what gets my carte bancaire sweating though, and I’m lucky enough to live less than a ten-minute walk away from one of largest flea markets in the world, where vintage chic melds with the beautifully bizarre and getting a real bargain beats battling around the rat run in Ikea into flat-pack submission.
If you’re heading up this way, eschew line 4 and the Porte de Clignancourt exit where cheap trainers and pleather handbags clog the lanes, and instead brave line 13 and get off at Garibaldi near the northern end of the main street Rue des Rosiers, meaning you’ll more easily get to good stuff and avoid all the tat (unless you really can’t do without some new incense sticks and a Bob Marley flag). Then all you have to do is keep an eye on your twitching credit card and decide which particular classic delight(s) your life and home are missing.
Rather than one big sprawl, the area is divided into lots of smaller markets (15 and counting), all specialising in slightly different things, though there’s furniture up the wazoo at every turn and if you have the time for a more comprehensive wander, it’s worth having a rifle through as many as you can (or bank balance will allow). See the photos for just a tiny taste of some of the gems I found on my way around. Needless to say I didn’t have a bag big enough to take a vintage pinball machine home, no matter how short the distance back to Granny Flat.
For those without a white van man on hand for larger purchases, there are plenty of smaller items to dig through from vintage postcards and knick knacks, to jewellery and classic toys. Remember though that actually digging may lead to some exasperated stall owners – ask before touching (‘je peux?’) and lead with your eyes; handling things is taken in some cases as a precursor to a sale. As with all flea markets, bartering is a useful skill, though you’ll have way more success if you bring cash (some stalls don’t take cards at all) and have a go at sealing the deal in French.
If you’re a visitor rather than a native and plan on organising your trip around a visit here, just be aware that the markets are only open at weekends and on Mondays, and you’d do well to try and avoid peak times if you want to snag the best bargains. Bad weather Mondays are treasure-searching gold.
Whatever your shopping motivation, for weary feet and spirits there are some weird and wonderful cafés dotted around, including some amazingly traditional French gems (remember the stall owners need to eat too!). And even if you haven’t been so lucky as to find that 19th century chandelier at the right price, keep your eyes peeled as you might just be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the local firefighters jogging around the area in their tiny, tight red shorts as they most regularly do. Sadly, no touching allowed, and models not for sale…
Click here to explore the various markets and offerings to plan your visit (available in English).
When you consider the choices on offer, months don’t get much worse than January. Last Monday marked what is billed as ‘Blue Monday’, what has officially been calculated as the most depressing day of the year. What with freezing temperatures and this week’s inauguration of a quite astounding choice of US president, January isn’t giving us much to smile about.
Now it’s likely that most of those resolutions earnestly made a couple of weeks ago have already fallen by the wayside, and the shiny potential of a new year has already become tarnished for most. But here in France the Bonne Année spirit lasts until the very end of the month when cards and greetings are exchanged right up until the 31st. Personally, I’m still buoyant with the thought of all the adventurous and positive things 2017 could potentially bring.
With this month all about embracing a new perspective, I decided on a clear but toe-numbingly cold winter’s day to head for the heights and take the chance to reflect on not just what the upcoming 12 months have in store for me, but for the city that for 8 years this year, I have had the pleasure (and yes, sometimes the pain) of calling my home.
The view was simply divine, if not a tad clouded by the seemingly now omnipresent fog of pollution that has become such an unwelcome reality in our daily lives. But even this had a place in my pensive reverie, as I pondered whether Paris would embrace the year from a greener perspective, and what changes we’d see in the city in a general sense as 2017 passes. It’s been a painful and disquiet few years for France’s capital, and just as we all wish the best for ourselves as the year progresses, then we wish the best for our concrete surroundings too.
Stuff, eh? We might all assume that our daily lives are ruled by crooked politicians and the chafing chains of bureaucracy, but we’d all be wrong. What actually seems to have the stranglehold over most of our lives these days is stuff. Yep, all of those things that we dedicate our lives to getting and having, before the buzz wears off and the getting and having reveal themselves as soul-sucking monsters with infinite appetites. That cycle of emotions that comes with every possession we encounter which takes us fleetingly through joy, quickly into indifference, finally sinking into guilt as our consumer desires eventually begin to drown us in clutter. Forget bent governments, that Ikea catalogue is really the boss of you.
In Paris, many of us manage to escape this ‘power of things’ given that we live in matchboxes (we can only dream of living in shoeboxes), forcing us to adopt a one-in-one-out policy when it comes to possessions. That joyous feeling of having a shiny brand-new thing quickly turns into frustration when you get it home and realise you have absolutely nowhere to put it, besides out the window. But as the generous provider of things, Dame Paris makes sure that we can both inhale and exhale goods as we need them in order to maintain our domestic equilibrium, and at the very same time instil within us the waste-not want-not community spirit that is so very virtuous, but somehow so typically un-Parisian. Behold, the Vide Grenier.
Something also very un-Parisian is the concept of the car boot, a vehicular feature rendered utterly useless thanks to Parisian parking rules dictating that cars need to be caressing each others’ rear ends like excited terriers to be considered properly parked. Forget trying to sell your old vinyl collection from the back of your car, even if you had room, you wouldn’t be able to open the damn thing. Thankfully Parisians have decided not to deny themselves access to the bric-a-brac spirit and every so often spill on to the pavements of the city’s quartiers to either peddle or browse the contents of theirs, and others’ homes (sorry, ‘matchboxes’) in an officially organised event known as a Vide Grenier, or literally ’emptying of the attic’.
I’ll admit it – after nearly seven years in France’s fair capital, there’s still a list of things I sorely miss from the motherland for which Paris can supply no substitute. It has diminished over time, a mere scribbled shadow of what it once was, but the one thing that remains steadfastly stubborn at the top (and I’m not proud of myself, dear readers), is the British supermarket. Sorry Carrefour, Monoprix et al, but you’re just simply no match for the behemoths I’m used to (and guys, if you insist on selling Marmite at such an offensively inflated price, you never, EVER will be).
In Paris though, there’s one thing on the other side of the coin that floats high above these pile-’em-high grocery warehouses, and that’s the traditional produce market, largely abandoned back home in favour of convenience and the fruitless (ha!) search for the cheapest price. And I don’t mean the status-coated ‘farmer’s markets’ either – throughout the city you’ll find both covered and outdoor markets every day of the week selling ordinary fruit and veg from mere pennies to the more upmarket selections in the more well-to-do arrondissements.
Whereas the supermarket is a relatively modern invention at a mere 100 years old*, showing its true influence in our food culture only in the last 40 years or so, the traditional market goes way, way back into the very deepest mists of time – so far back you can hardly even see the beginning anymore. I’ll leave Tesco, ASDA and friends to contemplate their frustratingly unflinching stranglehold on the UK economy, and instead 
You’ll find this rain-friendly covered market in the 3rd arrondissement near the Rue de Bretagne, and its name, ‘Market of the Red Children’ comes from the red-suited inhabitants of an ancient orphanage that used to stand nearby. Though the latter is long gone, the market has stood strong for the last 400 years, though understandably needed a facelift after centuries of trading, and closed for six years for a spruce-up in the late 1990s.
Rainbows of produce await hungry punters, but waiting until to you get home to satisfy your hunger sounds like unnecessary torture to me. To save you from breaking your teeth sinking them into a raw turnip, the real draw of le Marché des Enfants Rouges is the huge selection of freshly prepared food on offer from all corners of the world, hot and cold, served in compact glass pod-like structures with plenty of seating scattered around to take the load off. Happily the menu also includes fish and chips, so authentic that you could close your eyes and be sitting in a café on Brighton seafront. That’s another British comfort ticked of my list then.
pARIS: small capital 