Flea markets and other foolishness

We awoke after a night of restlessness because of a misguided attempt to entertain ourselves to sleep with just about the most exciting action film of 2010, Unstoppable (which we throughly enjoyed but did not help lull us to sleep.) We rushed to the bus to beat the crowd to Marché aux Puce de Porte de Vanves, a really great flea market in Paris.

A vendor gentleman kindly took our photo with a beautiful view of council flats behind us. 

What do you give a man who has everything...a stupid hat perhaps?

Love those Japanese, but they are hard competitors when it comes to flea markets.

We managed to prize a few treasures from the shrewd Parisian vendors, though.  Melissa really made out with a collection of ceramic antique tableware.  Not sure about the dates, because of a still existing language gap, but it sounded like 19th century vintage.

Also a very weird but cool looking fish salt and pepper boat:

Ned was a little annoyed by one vendor's attempt to gouge him on a handful of keychains.  He finally found satisfaction in the discovery of an original full sized poster of Jacques Tati's Playtime, (a favorite) along with a 1967 brochure of the film about its production. 

We later dragged our tired asses to the Marché du Livre Ancien et dÓccasion.  This was an open air book stall with tons of beautiful antique books, which were beyond our means at that point but also very interesting.  

Next, was lunch for Melissa...

...and Ned.

After a long nap and marveling over the spoils of the day, we took a long walk around town... 

 ... and into the night