Friday 2 November 2012

The Hail, the Salon and the Oysters

Thursday morning Pierre and I thought we'd set off to Le Salon du Livres et Papiers Ancien....at Espace  Champerret.  Nothing like 'the hunt'....you just never know what you'll find.

11am....gorgeous and sunny....a perfect day to make our way to Espace Champerret in the burbs......But Pierre, always the careful one, thought we should take our brollies, "just in case". 

Walking out the door, all was sunny and glorious. But by the time we had walked to the end of Rue de la Rochfoucauld (about 3 minutes) it was starting to get very dark....and then BOOM....an incredible clap of thunder....followed by strong winds, rain and hail!  Our brollies were definitely the worse for wear after that climatic event!

Oh, but le Salon was wonderful....it was worth battling the elements to get there....lots of fabulous ancien papers and books that you'd just never see in Australia....we're just not old enough to have that sort of treasure.

Beautiful French manuscripts, unique books of all shapes and sizes, engravings, posters, carte postale, calendars from 18th century to early 20th century, catalogues from the 1900s, vintage menu cards and recipe books, ancien newspapers....it was all so incredible (I just didn't know where to look first).  Oh....and there was a little bit of naughty stuff too....porn and bondage (mostly of the recent kind, not ancien!)
And then there was the food....that was good too.  However, I disgraced myself by asking the waiter if the fish soup was good!  He answered loudly in a strong French accent, "MADAME!!!!!" Well, it was very, very good....so were the oysters that followed the soup!  In fact....they were fantastique!

We trundled out at 7pm totally exhausted...but what a great day!
Les huîtres.....fantastique!
And this was my treasure....vintage postcards, a lovely old
Parisian book entitled "Confidences", and an adorable little porcelain puppet.  J'adore!

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5 comments:

  1. How are you going to get all the stuff you buy home? I would need to buy another dozen suitcases if I went to that market! Yummy oysters :-)
    Di
    xxxxx

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    1. Di, that market was really interesting...so many beautiful old books and papers on display. And those oysters! Surprisingly, since I've been here in Gay Paree I've bought very little....but I'm sure those little treasures above can be squeezed safely into one of my Fedex boxes! Hope so.

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  2. PS: We had that hail too, the deck of the boat was white for bout 10 minutes!

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  3. Robyn, you must have been in heaven. Adore your little porcelain puppet. Looks like Fedex is going to be sending quite a few boxes (or maybe a shipping container?) back to Australia. Glad you survived the storm and hope that it wasn't your gorgeous, refurbished brollie that was savaged. (Although I'm sure you keep that one for sunny summer days)
    I'm sure you'll be back at le salon soon. Jude

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