If I had a Million Dollars

(or even just a couple hundred), I'd spend it all on cool things at the Paris Flea Market!!!  Apparently it's been around for forever, i.e. since the police shipped all the shady second-hand dealers out of the main part of town, and they settled down in the 18th arrondissement in the last decade of the 19th century.

"Le marché aux puces, Porte de Clignancourt", Luigi Loir (1845-1916).

Sophie had fun playing with the toys and opening the boxes and touching the velvet chairs and waving around the silver ladles.  We stopped at this pair of stalls situated across from each other.  One was full of silver, the other of American memorabilia, and both were run by really friendly men (that sounds weird, but I mean it in the most literal sense).  One man put on some music that got Sophie's attention...

(push play to set the mood)

...and she danced a bit.  He also brought out these plastic figures of Donald Duck and Scrooge McDuck, and she loved them!  We had a fun little French conversation about how cute she was, and the only thing that I didn't understand the first time around was, "Is she your first?"  Sigh.  Sometimes I hate having to say, "Oh, no, I'm just the nanny..."  I wish I could take even a little credit.  

Then we went to another stall and DISASTER struck!  Sophie had picked up an old wooden spool, which she could't break, so I let her hang on to it.  But I when I picked her up to keep her from the more breakable things, she DROPPED the spool right into a bucket of BREAKABLE things!  And one broke!  I gasped at the sound of glass and I apologized profusely and I offered to pay for the damage.  Fortunately, it was a bucket of modern-looking, mass-produced, all-the-same-thing things, and the seller brushed it off, but with a stern look on his face that seemed to say, "See!  That's why babies don't belong at flea markets!"  I was horrified and so embarrassed, and we left the flea market then and there.  It wasn't Sophie's fault, it wasn't entirely mine, it was just an accident!  Oh can I ever show my face there again??