Paris Diaries: April 9-11, 2022

French Bargain Hunt, budget Versailles, and an aeroplane on the roof

April 9, Paris, France

A worry a traveller might have about Paris is being ripped off by the Uber driver once the swindler behind the wheel clocks that they’re a tourist. They can skip this whole worry entirely if they so wish by getting their Uber driver to drop them in Saint-Ouen, where it looks like they’ll be mugged anyway.

Should they manage to hold onto their wallets, they’ll want to explore the Saint-Ouen flea market. It’s in the north of the city, a separate town really, and is ramshackle and peppered with cheap restaurants and huge cavernous market buildings full of traders. It’s like being on Bargain Hunt but everything’s French and you realise you don’t have a clue about antiques.

We spent really quite a long time debating the purchase of a box purported to be an old brick mould from India. 19 euro felt like a steal, but who were we to say whether 19 euro was a steal or actually a really quite impressive rip off? Who were we to say whether it really was an old brick mould from India? Then there was the vintage catcher’s mitt going at 180 euro, the Americana Coca-Cola signs at 400 euro.

Then there are the other markets full of furniture that looks like it belongs in a palace, sitting in storage units on an unremarkable strip that should host repair shops and pretentious falafel stalls with three different types of houmous.

I dreamed of buying something small and unassuming, an eggcup, say, taking it on Antiques Roadshow and having Fiona Bruce look on as I’m told it’s worth hundreds of thousands, maybe millions. But I didn’t buy an eggcup, or anything else. I know that if I had, the expert would have said something along the lines of, “you paid ten pounds for this? I hope you kept the receipt!”

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April 10, Paris, France

There was something about the flea markets that suddenly made us very aware of our spending, and we shelved a tentatively scheduled trip to Versailles. We picked Vincennes instead, because it’s closer, cheaper, and crucially also has a chateau and happens to begin with the letter ‘v’.

It’s my kind of the chateau, the Vincennes gaffe, plain and unassuming. Although Kings of France did stay there between the fourteen and sixteenth centuries, it’s less in-your-face opulence. And, since the budget for looking after it is presumably a lot lower than that of Versailles, now a bit dusty around the edges.

The architecture nerds among you will want to know that its keep, or central tower, is the tallest in Europe, and the fiscally prudent among you (hi, dad) will want to know that you can see a lot of it for free. You can’t go inside, but you can wander around its sprawling complex and pick out which building would be yours in the revolution.

And crucially for the penny-pinchers (dad), they leave the door open to the very impressive chapel so you can see the whole thing for free, right in view of the man himself on the cross, who I thought looked a bit judgmental for my liking.

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April 11, Paris, France

On our last day in Paris we wanted a view, and the Montparnasse Tower was expensive and out of the way, and the Eiffel Tower has the crucial problem of providing a view of Paris that doesn’t contain the Eiffel Tower.

So we went to the Galeries Lafayette, the Harrod’s of Paris but better, because it has a roof with a view and isn’t in Knightsbridge. The view was fantastic, obviously, so I won’t spend any time describing it, and instead take you on a historical distraction.

Much to my chagrin, I am only the second most exciting thing to arrive on the Lafayette’s roof. I lose out on this occasion to Jules Védrines, whose arrival was more exciting because he was in an aeroplane.

In 1912, when it’s fair to say attitudes to health and safety were a tad more lax, Védrines won 25,000 francs for being the first man to land a plane on the roof of the Galeries Lafayette. It was a success, if you count a success as being winning 25,000 francs but crashing into a part of the building, damaging both himself and the aeroplane.

That the Galeries Lafayette was in the centre of Paris seemed to add to the whole excitement of the endeavour, old Jules had to employ people to stand on the roof to catch his wings as he landed. A different time.

You’ll be unsurprised to know Jules eventually met his end in a plane crash.

I wasn’t thinking about Jules and his plane when I was standing on the roof of the Lafayette, however, I was looking out to Paris and thinking that I love it. Despite the fact the world has many countries and cities I would like to see, many places I haven’t yet been, it won’t ever take much to pull me right back to Paris.