Saturday morning we met Gerry. Gerry found us through The Blog, after he Googled Levallois-Perret. He's Canadian, but he spends a few months a year living here. He just got into town last week, so we arranged to meet at the market at the foot of his apartment building.
After finding each other we walked into the center of town for coffees, then talked about the delights of living in France, like taxes.
Back at home, David wanted to get some chores done, but the weather was so favorable he decided to go out with me. I'd been having a rough time at work, and I really wanted to get out into the city and go shopping to make myself feel better. In the end, I'm still a girl, and retail therapy can do wonders.
On the way to the metro we passed through the Levallois-Perret garden show, which was on
display in the park close to our apartment. I questioned the logic of a garden show in a town where everyone lives in apartments, but it seemed to be pretty popular.So I did some shopping, and David waited patiently. In the end I wasn't particularly successful, but it was nice to get out and walk around. On our way home we picked up the strongest camembert cheese we could find and I wrapped it up in paper for Benoit's birthday.
Back into Paris, we arrived at Benoit and Audrey's new apartment, which they had been in
the process of moving into for the past month. We had drinks and hung out on the balcony with their other friends before moving to "Au Denier Metro" (At the Last Metro) for dinner and Benoit's birthday celebration.On Sunday the Levallois-Perret garage sales were back, and after my trip to the market I took a walk to see all the stuff. When I ask myself "How many of these garage sales have I seen?" I end up thinking about how long we've lived here, and the answer always surprises me.
I was never a big fan of garage sales at home, and French garage sales seem to have most of the same junk. But they also have some really neat old stuff you don't easily see in the US. For example, loads of silverware. Proper silverware, in sets, in fancy wooden boxes. I stopped to admire a full set of new copper pans for sale for 180 euros. I asked the woman why they were new and she gave me a story I couldn't understand about her mother-in-law.
Beautiful old wooden hobby horses, pocket watches, and little sets of snail forks. I only figured out that they were snail forks because...there were little silver snails on the end of every little
fork. Cute, I thought, but what on earth would I do with it?I guessed that this is where a lot of people sell their parents' stuff after they have died. All of these beautiful bits of classic European history that would be in a museum if there wasn't so much of it still lying around. I wanted to find something old and pretty to put in our apartment and to eventually take home, but we really don't have the space for it right now.
So in the end, I bought David a used Playstation game: Gran Turismo 4. That's a bit of history, too. Gran Turismo 5 has been out for some time now.
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