Written TidbitsShopping in Paris

By Jim and Emmy Humberd

If, like Emmy, you never met a Marché Aux Puces (flea market) you didn't like, Paris is for you. At St. Ouen near Porte de Clignancourt, a patron can buy anything from junk to antiques in the many blocks of street sellers in this ungainly marketplace. The Flea Market at Porte de Montreuil is over 100 years old, and one year we bought a clock that the seller said was at least 100 years old. The alarm is a music box that plays such a pretty tune, we don't care how old the clock really is.

Just across the street we found a beautiful, very new multi-storied shopping mall, as modern as any in the US. At the Carrefour grocery, on the second floor, there were over 40 check stands, and grocery carts with specially designed wheels that permitted a continuous line of departing customers to easily ride the moving sidewalk that slopes down to street level.

The outdoor market at Place D'Aligre is a wonderful food market, we have visited several different years. The Chinese bakery advertised Italian bread, and we bought a delicious flat bread like we enjoyed in Sardinia one year.

There are more than 300 very distinctive shopping arcades in Paris, such as the Passage Choiseul, built in 1825. Shopping streets with a roof, different from a shopping mall in the US.

We visited a grocery store on the south side of Paris that had 52 check stands, each and every one manned and busy on a Saturday morning. Thirty to forty check-stands in a new grocery store are more the norm, than the exception.

Famous book stalls line the riverside on the Rive Gauche, the Left Bank of the Seine, just across the river, south of Notre Dame. Walk here at one time and see an almost continuous line of wooden boxes attached to the banister. The next time, the top and sides of the boxes have been unfurled, merchandise is displayed, and we are in the midst of a busy shopping street.

Galeries Lafayette, which covers a couple of square blocks of Boulevard Haussmann, just behind the Opera, must be considered one of the world's ultimate department stores where one can buy "… the latest in fashions, perfumes, and frivolous things."

In Paris, as in Venice, a wrong turn can result in serendipity: "… the gift of finding valuable things not sought for."

Books by Jim and Emmy Humberd:
Invitation to France
Invitation to Germany
Invitation to Italy

Related Links:
Paris Pages - Shops
SHOPPING in PARIS
Paris Digest's selection of shopping suggestions in Paris

French Video Immersion