Paris: May 14: Market Day, plus Les Halles

This ended up being a day spent mainly at markets.

We slept twelve hours the previous night recovering from our jetlag. Once up, it was almost time for lunch. We headed to the market that we found closed when we tried to visit it the previous day. This day it was open when we arrived.

At this time, I also opened my shutter and started taking pictures.

Di Yin also took many pictures. The latter link goes to her first picture from this day (picture #121 in the album). When you see a picture captioned "Sunday morning" (picture #219), you're done with her pictures for the day. I'll link to the next day's pictures in the following post.

The Marche (market) des Enfants Rouges is the oldest covered market in Paris, having started in the early part of the 17th century. The market, though not particularly large, has stands of most types: meat, seafood, vegetables, cheese, wine, baked goods, flowers, and prepared/hot food. Our assessment from the previous day that the market has a disproportionate number of cooked food stands for its size was accurate. We decided to have part of our lunch at one of them.

After finishing our lunch, we took the subway north of the city to Marche aux Puces St-Ouen de Clignancourt, Paris's largest conglomeration of flea markets. When I say flea market, don't think junk--many of these businesses sell new products or high-quality antiques. Also, nothing is cheap. The prices are the same you'd pay in a regular store.

By the way, I didn't take any photographs in the markets. Di Yin took a lot though; look at hers.

These markets (yes, multiple markets) are spread throughout a maze of streets. They seemed endless. Some markets were along major roads; other entwined through clearly pre-existing alleys; others were in long, straight lanes designed for this purpose. The businesses in these markets came in various forms: stalls, tents, booths, stands, stores within shopping arcades, or members of long rows of ten-foot by ten-foot shops. Clearly the lowest on the totem pole are the guys who stand under a highway overpass, hands full of stuff for sale: sunglasses, watches, jewelry. "Not expensive, not expensive," they call in French.

The low-end venues sell everything, mainly clothing and accessories. The high-end ones mostly sell furniture and home decor. Often these are antiques (from, according to my guidebook, the Second Empire). A couple shops made me gasp due to their density of impressive, ornate, sometimes rococo, chandeliers. I think these were in the Biron Market. In other markets, some shops have North African goods such as hookahs, tajine pots, carpets, and statues.

Di Yin and I both most enjoyed the tangled, uncrowded streets of the Vernaison Market and its eclectic selection. (I spotted some 100-year-old Parisian newspapers, for instance.)

By the way, the population in the neighborhood around Clignancourt is more diverse than in any other region I visited in the city during my trip. That's probably because it's poorer.

After browsing our fill, we took the train back to near our apartment. We decided to walk around part of a neighborhood near us: Les Halles. I took out my camera again. The pictures document our wandering fairly well. On Rue Montorguiel, a high-quality food shop street, we bought ingredients for dinner and came home to cook and eat. Interestingly, it turned out the fruits we bought--peaches and strawberries--were super tasty. Over the next few days, we got to calling the strawberries super-strawberries because they burst with so much flavor that they dominated the taste of whatever they were paired with. They had more strawberry flavor than anything I've bought from the farmers markets in California.

After dinner we headed out again to do some exploring before nightfall. We explored a bit more of Les Halles as night fell and wandered through Ile da la Cite and the Latin Quarter at night. The Latin Quarter was lively and packed with people. Once it got dark, I stopped being able to take pictures. This wasn't a great loss as I knew we explore those areas during the daytime at some point, and there'd be plenty of opportunity for pictures.