A Saturday Vide-Grenier 12-27-25

We changed todays’s little outing as we recognized that we would not be able to get over to Porte de Vanves with enough time to actually go through it before it shut down. But we were fortunate in having an another possibility, a Vide-Grenier much closer to us. Located just a little north of the Palais Royal it was only a 20 minute bus with an additional 15 minute walk away. Plus it was scheduled for operation until 5:00pm so we had plenty of time to rummage through every stall. Vide-Greniers differ from outright Brocante markets in that both professional brocantes and private garage sale vendors purchase stalls and sell their goods. What that means is that there is a lot of miscellaneous junk in with the more curated junk. But that also means that there can be real treasures hiding in the weeds. I actually prefer these types of sales to the more purely professional ones, because the opportunity to haggle is much greater. Today I

wandered into a stall where the vendor had taken the time to display probably 150 watches individually on his tables but he had a box of medals just tossed in helter-skelter. I rooted through and dug up a single cycling medal. The sellers were sitting away from their stall so I signaled that I found something of interest. One of them came over and I gave him the medal and asked the price. Whereupon he said he would have to consult the boss, still sitting. He came back and said 15 euros and I sighed and said pretty expensive. So I cut to the chase and walked over to the boss and after going through the required civilities I offered him 10 euros. He thought for minute and agreed, so I bought it. I think having a bit of knowledge about the French culture and of course, a really cold day did the trick. It’s a pretty cool medal, from the Spanish Cycling Federation; for cycling merit.

We were both getting cold and decided we’d seen enough and wanted to go for lunch. We had originally thought we might eat a restaurant close to the sale. But I misjudged the distance so we had to pivot to another restaurant that was closer. It was the original Chartier in the center of Paris. It was about 10 minutes away and right on the street that we were walking. So we walked up the street while considering other possibilities along the way. When we got up close to the restaurant I noticed a bunch of people standing around on the corner. But that was 30 meters from the front of the restaurant so I didn’t think much of it. But holy cow, I walked around the corner and the line went all the way down and into the restaurant. Being as cold as it was, it absolutely out of the question whether we would stand in that line. So we left and walked down to

an old standby, Chipotle. It’s one of two in all Paris and when we really need a chile fix we go in. Today we found however they had reconfigured the restaurant and we would have to go either go upstairs or down. We couldn’t manage it today so we walked up to where we could catch a bus over to Gare de l’Est. We were betting that the Chartier across from the station would be much less in demand. We were right, we had about a 10 minute wait before we got in. It was much busier than yesterday but they have a well oiled machine. Today Deb ordered the lentil vinaigrette and duck confit while I opted for the house pate de campagne and civet de sanglier (wild boar). During our meal we had very nice interactions with our neighbors. One set were a couple middle-aged French guys who were very jovial. The other couple were a mixed nationality, she was from Moscow and he was from London. They had just visited his mother, a German, who lives in Limoges and were on their way back to Dubai where they currently live. As soon as they arrive

back in Dubai they will board a plane for Russia for a two week visit with her parents. We shared some of our wine with them because they were eating duck and somehow a coke just didn’t cut it. They seemed very grateful and said it really improved their meal. For dessert Deb had a profiterole while I had Fromage blanc.  When we left we wished our French neighbors Happy New Year. They kissed Deb’s hand and complimented her French pronunciation (lol). They also said how rare it was that Americans tried to speak French while visiting. He said that he had done business with the U.S. 30 years and none of his American colleagues ever spoke French. Kinda sad.