Paris Day 1

Today we spent the afternoon at the famous flea market, Les Puces de Saint-Ouen. It was HUGE. It's basically several different markets all clustered together. I used this map from Oh Happy Day, so I could narrow down which markets I wanted to go to.

We started at Marche Vernaison, because I read that this market has a lot of little things to buy as opposed to furniture and we needed to be able to pack our treasures. Almost everything we bought was from here. We also went to Paul Bert, Serpette, Le Passage, and Dauphine, spending about 5 hours in total walking around. It was heaven.

My dad, sister, and I love to go thrifting, antiquing, garage saling, and flea marketing. We go on treasure hunts almost every time we're together. Some of my favorite things are from these trips, like my white vanity-turned-desk and my steamer trunk. These kinds of treasures you will keep forever, so I was SO looking forward to spending an afternoon perusing the mecca of all flea markets. If only it didn't cost an arm and a leg to ship things to the states, we would have left with a lot more.

Like this kneeler. So adorable and perfect for Dan. The top lifted up for prayer books and there was a little cabinet in the middle too. We'll have to find one of these back home.

I couldn't get enough of these chairs. 

I've wanted a chair of this style for a long time and these were the perfect color!

This is an old wooden seat from a ferris wheel. 

I'm not sure what anyone would do with it, but it was really cool.

This booth was full of old books. 

I probably spent about an hour here and found the perfect little book for an early birthday gift for Dan!

Together these chairs were selling for 16,000 euros!

Here are some of the treasures we took home:

I found this vintage Christian Dior neck scarf in my favorite colors and had to have it!

I sifted through several boxes to find these old postcards of places around Paris. 

I think they will be really special framed together.

This is the book I got for Dan. It is a Catholic missal from 1897 and it is tiny! Dan always reads the Magnificat prayer book to follow along during Mass and this is a cute 19th century version. 

I really wanted to find something that we could hang in our living room to remember our trip. We have a French tapestry from our honeymoon in Switzerland, so I wanted to start a little collection of things from our travels. I found this map of Europe from 1890 that will be perfect for our living room! 

Next we headed to Notre Dame and attended Vespers and Mass. It was beautiful. If we have time we're going to try to go back and spend more time looking around inside.

We finished off the day by stopping by the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower. We only had a little bit of time before the Metro closed, but we just had to see the Eiffel Tower up close at night. It started to sparkle right when we arrive at midnight and was magnificent.