les puces de saint-ouen

back in paris, where early sunday morning found frida & i rummaging through stalls at the largest fleamarket in europe. it's known formally as le marché aux puces de saint-ouen, or more fondly as les puces (the fleas).

the markets are right up on the northern fringe of paris (just beyond the périphérique, the border of paris) at mº porte de clignancourt. this area has had some form of market life since the middle ages, and is most famous for its hundreds of antique shops. les puces are made up of about a dozen fleamarkets, and each part of the market district sells different things. the antiques market district still thrives today, in the many winding, narrow lanes that featured in woody allen's latest film 'midnight in paris'...

altogether there's something like 2,500 stalls that spider-web their way across the district, literally selling everything under the sun.

a really gorgeous part of the market is called marché dauphine. it's an art nouveau tiered-warehouse building in brick & green iron. this was a welcome place to have a roof over our heads as we were hit with a sudden downpour of huge, wet raindrops. in the marché dauphine we found a whole level of vintage clothing that was a real mix of original haute couture (on the more expensive side of life - we saw a vintage chanel blazer for 300€) and your everyday second-hand friperie fun. we got lost in & amongst the hundred's of fur coats - got me so excited for european winter!

everywhere we looked we saw shops selling old vinyls, yellowing photographs, prints, books, magazines & collectibles (sooo many editions of tintin - they love him over here!).

i was so happy to lay my eyes on a vintage soft leather bag in olive green. the best thing about it is that i managed to barter the price down from 60€ to 30€. yes! frida found funky vintage sunglasses, and after falling in love with several old photographs of paris - she also bought chunky silver bracelets from one of the many silver dealers.

so easy to lose track of time here, not to mention literally losing yourself in & amongst the seemingly endless number of stalls. before you know it you've whiled away five hours here...

and so ends yet another sunday aux puces. wasn't the first time ...& definitely won't be the last.

xo,

S.

vintage chanel shop

portobello market

i'd been waiting for ages to get down to portobello road market, but i never seemed to be free on the saturday - which is when the market is its largest & busiest. it's at notting hill, in west london. i had to do a bit of guesswork to find it, because my map of london didn't quite reach as far portobello road. luckily enough, there were streams of people flocking to the market, so i followed in their general direction...

the market is made up of both a trillion different stalls along the road, as well as permanent shops lining the street. a bunch of these are antiques shops, for which p/bello road is probably most famous. the market brings everything to life though, with quite literally everything that comes to mind when you think 'market' - & then some. there were lots of vintage & second-hand silver jewellery stalls (at which i couldn't work up the courage to barter down the price of a silver chain bracelet with a heart lock) as well as old (& oooooold) books. there was even a whole collection of suitcases filled to the brim with old photographs of people & places. i took home with me a postcard-sized black & white photograph of trafalgar square - something to stick up on my wall as a nice memory of london..

further along into the market were collector's items (mini household objects, toy soldiers, dated cars, etc), old film cameras & lots of stalls selling everything leather. portobello road stretches a long way (the length of notting hill, north-south), and by the end my legs were about ready to drop off. luckily, here was where all the food stalls were. i devoured a delicious falafal wrap, and honestly - who can say no to a nutella crêpe?

fun fact: george orwell lived in one of the brightly coloured houses along portobello road in the late 1920s.

i also managed to visit harrods today - london's famous department store, on knightsbridge. they had a display similar to that of the myer windows in melbourne - dedicated to the royal wedding. with hundreds of windows to fill, they covered everything from cakes (all the top designers created their own celebratory wedding cake), to 10's of different weddings gowns, to photos of all the royal weddings that have taken place in the past two centuries. i never realised princess di's sleeves were so huge.

when i finally reached the end of portobello road (which is to say the bottom of notting hill), i asked one of the market stall owners where the nearest tube station was (i was about 5cm to the left of the edge of my map = not helpful). the closest was the one i had come from... so the day ended with me hiking back up notting hill, and tubing it home: extremely exhausted - but so happy to have spent the day here on portobello road.

today was one of my last in london. the next couple of days will be spent packing up all the things i've collected over the past few weeks & somehow trying to fit it into my pack.

paris, here i come!



S.

heaped-up paint 

crazy café with photos of diana completely covering the walls, tables, chairs, mugs, etc.

some old-school french grammer? love how the verb 'to suffer' looks like 'to fuffer'