Marché aux Puces de Vanves

Today I went to a real flea market: Marché aux Puces de Vanves, which is just technically still in Paris.  It's about a block from the big ring road, on the southwest part of the city.  I'd heard (via the internet) that it was in some ways better (read: cheaper) than the bigger flea market in the north. This picture is the entrance.  It seemed small at first, but it wrapped around at least a block and a half and the stalls were packed much closer together.

There were a lot more people who'd just brought out boxes of junk (or maybe not, which I guess is the charm there) that people were sifting through. There was some nice pottery from southern France, although it tended to have chipped edges. There were a lot of piles of silverware and photographs. It was very much a caveat emptor kind of place.

And then... there were art dealers. Some of whom had artists I'd even heard of, like Léger (call back to a previous post, but really it was him -- you can see them at the front of the table). 

Anyway, long story short: I bought art. 

And it was a long process: I asked about it and then I thought no, that's too much (I told her, "it's worth that, but I don't have that") and then I came back and stared at it again and then I went and looked at some of the other art dealers and then I decided I could, in fact, spend that much, because she took credit cards. All the art sellers I interacted with in any detail (admittedly only two) were very nice and let me muddle through in French. Even the one who was clearly very capable in English and was speaking it to another couple in it. That made me happy.

I dithered for so long that people had started packing up their things, so I didn't manage to buy everything I'd considered (sorry, lovely coat hooks that were probably too heavy for my drywall anyway).

I returned to one seller that had boxes of random books, because he had a a really cool book of old post cards. The front was in a neat art nouveau font and it was full of black and white post cards someone had collected, mainly of French churches. But when I asked how much it was, the guy just said "chais pas" [dunno], that he'd have to look at it and walked away. And then he started talking to someone else. So I didn't end up getting that. Or a picture of it, because I really wasn't expecting that response! Probably for the best: it was big and heavy. 

Here are some photos of tile in the subway.  The one with the sign I took mostly to remind myself of a strange language thing I've noticed: it's so inconsistent what they translate into.  This sign has many languages, but that's rare. The subway always says verbal announcements in French and English.  Then they throw in a third language, seemingly at random. I've heard Italian, German, Spanish, and Japanese. Whereas the airport had all the signs in Mandarin, in addition to English and French.  I've never seen so much variation in such a small region.