Et maintenant le voyage a la supermarche!*
Just back from Paris - what do you say about Paris? It’s Paris. It’s difficult whenever you go to a place which has such mythology surrounding it to experience the ‘real’ place - not the tinsel-bedecked plastic-model faux-‘culture’ hung in the window for tourists.
We managed pretty well I think. We stayed in Montmartre (about as touristy as you get) but well off the beaten track. What was really cool was that people spoke French to us the whole weekend, not automatically addressing us in English as they did last time we were here. I think it was because we tried, and even when I spoke in my execrable ‘French’ they courteously kept speaking French, which was great! Although I did have to tell some people (in French!) that I didn’t speak French. The moment when it really hit home that I didn’t speak French was when I was trying on a Bakelite bangle in this EPIC antiques market (seriously, 500 vendors on the banks of the Seine - amazing). It didn’t fit, and the woman was kindly laughing at me. “I have big hands,” I said in French, ruefully. Then she really laughed, and only as I was walking away did I deconstruct my sentence and realise that I’d said “je suis” instead of “j’ai” and “gros” instead of “grande”, so what I actually said was “I am fat hands.”
“Hello, nice to meet you, I am fat hands.”
We also went to the famous Clignancourt market for a couple of hours the first day, where I bought the only things I bought the whole trip, below.
I love this photo, it’s dated 1932 and the woman is writing with a pen and inkwell. I always look through boxes of random photos in antique shops wherever I go, because as a rabid photographer I always wonder who the people are and why they ended up in an antique shop rather than being treasured by their family.
And the Bakelite buttons are my first ever bits of Bakelite, which I absolutely love for its rich colour. They’re hand-carved, which you can tell because the striations are different on all of them. There’s a deep red carved bracelet in Portobello Rd that fits me that I’m lusting after, but it’s £125 which is insanity. These buttons are the closest I’ll get!
For the whole three days we basically wandered round Paris, off the main streets whenever we could, implementing the baked goods rule (that we had to eat cakes or biscuits at least two or three times a day). Steve mainly went for almond croissants and tarts, whereas I undertook an intense study of the sable framboise, an example below. (I think I had four. Maybe three plus assorted tarts.)
We stumbled into a random little market on Saturday and saw the most incredible food stalls, which I assume are wheeled out all over Paris every day. Piles and piles of fresh-baked bread, enormous wheels of cheese, fragrant flower markets, sausages that smelled strongly of inside of pig, and not in a good way, wines, jams, chocolates. It was all just so delicious.
On Sunday there was what seemed to be a spontaneous junk market down one little street we walked past, with people setting out blankets on the ground and folding tables and pouring out assorted rubbish for the delectation of the junk-loving public. I didn’t buy anything, mainly because I didn’t have time to sort through things, and it was Steve’s holiday too, so not fair to ask him to stand around all morning.
We saw all the tourist highlights of course, but since we’d explored them thoroughly in 2005 it was enough just to see things in the distance and to wander through the Louvre without feeling like we had to see EVERYTHING. Not that we have by a long shot; it’d take years. Here's a detail of Paul Delaroche’s The Young Martyr, which I really liked the look of, for its Victorian sentimentality.
I also loved all the very artistic graffiti and ads, particularly in Montmartre:
I think though that what made the weekend so great was travelling by rail. It’s so peaceful, so hassle-free. You get on a bus, then a tube, then a train, then you’re in Paris. No waiting around for hours, no rush to a grim airport, just floating along through the country drinking wine and reading. Also what made the weekend so great was Steve. He is so fun! I mean, we’ve been married for nearly seven years so I know him pretty well, but he is just so hilarious, and so tolerant of my silliness. He contributes a fair bit of silliness himself, don’t get me wrong. It’s been a while since we’ve been away together in a stress-free environment, forming in-jokes and composing idiotic songs and doing impressions (and eating cakes) and it was GREAT.
*To end, I will embed our theme song for the weekend. If you’ve never seen it, you’re in for a treat. Or if you have. Or you might think I'm insane.
We managed pretty well I think. We stayed in Montmartre (about as touristy as you get) but well off the beaten track. What was really cool was that people spoke French to us the whole weekend, not automatically addressing us in English as they did last time we were here. I think it was because we tried, and even when I spoke in my execrable ‘French’ they courteously kept speaking French, which was great! Although I did have to tell some people (in French!) that I didn’t speak French. The moment when it really hit home that I didn’t speak French was when I was trying on a Bakelite bangle in this EPIC antiques market (seriously, 500 vendors on the banks of the Seine - amazing). It didn’t fit, and the woman was kindly laughing at me. “I have big hands,” I said in French, ruefully. Then she really laughed, and only as I was walking away did I deconstruct my sentence and realise that I’d said “je suis” instead of “j’ai” and “gros” instead of “grande”, so what I actually said was “I am fat hands.”
“Hello, nice to meet you, I am fat hands.”
We also went to the famous Clignancourt market for a couple of hours the first day, where I bought the only things I bought the whole trip, below.
I love this photo, it’s dated 1932 and the woman is writing with a pen and inkwell. I always look through boxes of random photos in antique shops wherever I go, because as a rabid photographer I always wonder who the people are and why they ended up in an antique shop rather than being treasured by their family.
And the Bakelite buttons are my first ever bits of Bakelite, which I absolutely love for its rich colour. They’re hand-carved, which you can tell because the striations are different on all of them. There’s a deep red carved bracelet in Portobello Rd that fits me that I’m lusting after, but it’s £125 which is insanity. These buttons are the closest I’ll get!
For the whole three days we basically wandered round Paris, off the main streets whenever we could, implementing the baked goods rule (that we had to eat cakes or biscuits at least two or three times a day). Steve mainly went for almond croissants and tarts, whereas I undertook an intense study of the sable framboise, an example below. (I think I had four. Maybe three plus assorted tarts.)
We stumbled into a random little market on Saturday and saw the most incredible food stalls, which I assume are wheeled out all over Paris every day. Piles and piles of fresh-baked bread, enormous wheels of cheese, fragrant flower markets, sausages that smelled strongly of inside of pig, and not in a good way, wines, jams, chocolates. It was all just so delicious.
On Sunday there was what seemed to be a spontaneous junk market down one little street we walked past, with people setting out blankets on the ground and folding tables and pouring out assorted rubbish for the delectation of the junk-loving public. I didn’t buy anything, mainly because I didn’t have time to sort through things, and it was Steve’s holiday too, so not fair to ask him to stand around all morning.
We saw all the tourist highlights of course, but since we’d explored them thoroughly in 2005 it was enough just to see things in the distance and to wander through the Louvre without feeling like we had to see EVERYTHING. Not that we have by a long shot; it’d take years. Here's a detail of Paul Delaroche’s The Young Martyr, which I really liked the look of, for its Victorian sentimentality.
I also loved all the very artistic graffiti and ads, particularly in Montmartre:
I think though that what made the weekend so great was travelling by rail. It’s so peaceful, so hassle-free. You get on a bus, then a tube, then a train, then you’re in Paris. No waiting around for hours, no rush to a grim airport, just floating along through the country drinking wine and reading. Also what made the weekend so great was Steve. He is so fun! I mean, we’ve been married for nearly seven years so I know him pretty well, but he is just so hilarious, and so tolerant of my silliness. He contributes a fair bit of silliness himself, don’t get me wrong. It’s been a while since we’ve been away together in a stress-free environment, forming in-jokes and composing idiotic songs and doing impressions (and eating cakes) and it was GREAT.
*To end, I will embed our theme song for the weekend. If you’ve never seen it, you’re in for a treat. Or if you have. Or you might think I'm insane.
Click to view