Tag Archives: shopping

Fabulous French Weekend Markets

They are ubiquitous throughout France — the weekend markets that contain a mix of items from fresh fruit and vegetables to cheese and sausage to clothing. We’ve been to a variety of them in cities and towns from one end of France to the other.

Bright umbrellas shade the buyers and sellers at the Saturday market in St. Girons

One of the nicest markets we have attended has been in the town that we now call home — St. Girons in the Midi-Pyrenees down near the border with Spain. And no, just in case you think I am being biased, this truly is a well-rounded market since there are just as many ‘pretty things’ like hand-thrown pottery and linen clothing and original artwork as there are stalls selling food.

You can always find live music each week in several places sprinkled up and down the streets and laneways.

Musician busking for change in front of a brasserie in St. Girons in the Midi-Pyrenees of France

The setting is especially charming, too — from the open-to-the-skies square at the end of Rue Gambetta down through the avenue of plane trees which parallel the swiftly flowing River Salat. Those traders beneath the lush green trees must be quite grateful for that shade on those blisteringly hot and sunny South of France Saturdays. We shoppers certainly are!

Shopping beneath the plane trees at the St. Girons Saturday market

We feel quite lucky to have this year-around weekly market a mere few minutes away from our new apartment. We walked out the front door with our canvas shopping bags and voila — we were across the footbridge over the river and right in the thick of things in just under 15 minutes.

Footbridge over the River Salat in St. Girons, Midi-Pyrenees, France

Picturesque St. Girons hugs both sides of the River Salat in the South of France

The produce is always ultra fresh and significantly cheaper than what we pay in the local supermarkets.

Shopping in the Rue Gambetta square in St. Girons in the Midi-Pyrenees of France

We fell in love with the vivid colours used by one potter who had a booth at the markets.

Bright coloured pottery for sale at the Saturday market in St. Girons, Midi-Pyrenees, France

We picked one vivid green bowl, changed our minds, and decided to go for the larger orange bowl you see at the bottom filled with fruit.

Buying a piece of pottery at the Saturday market in St. Girons

Large orange-glazed pottery bowl from the Saturday market in St. Girons, Midi-Pyrenees, France

Hope you are enjoying these slices of life in the South of France!

One of Those “Only In France” Kind of Stories

Seriously??? Do YOU really fancy a bit of wildlife interaction as part of your ‘retail experience’ on the weekend? This is truly one of those “only in France” stories.

Down in the Pyrenees in the south of France, a wild boar caused Saturday shoppers to flee as it raced through the packed-with-people retail district in Toulouse on Saturday frightening the shoppers. I don’t know how I would have reacted in that situation!

The link for the story is here — complete with a news video (all in French).

London’s Funky and Vibrant Spitalfields and Brick Lane

One of the nicest aspects of living in a thoroughly metropolitan place like London is the market scene and we’ve recently discovered two back-to-back and quite wonderful areas. The neighbourhoods are gritty and funky and full of a mix of old shops, new shops, converted warehouses, and vast spaces that formerly housed manufacturing of some kind and which are now partitioned into market stalls where up-and-coming fashion designers ply their wares. Art galleries, performance spaces, and the vintage clothing and goods scene are all quite well accommodated in this part of London, too.

The markets at Spitalfields and Brick Lane are both a short walk from the Liverpool Street Station which serves both the London Underground and the regional above ground trains.

Just getting there is an interesting walk past a mix of old multi-story buildings with shops or restaurants on the ground floor and apartments above juxtaposed with glossy, glass, and oh-so-contemporary skyscrapers such as the London landmark amusingly nicknamed ‘The Gherkin’ and more correctly named 30 St. Mary Axe.

London landmark skyscraper nicknamed 'The Gherkin' looming over older buildings.

The walk that leads to the Old Spitalfields Market has the beautiful Christ Church, Spitalfields at the end of the street. Shops, pubs, and galleries flank both sides of this lovely street.

Christ Church Spitalfields at the end of Brushfield Street.

We entered the vast glass-covered area filled with market stalls and stumbled upon an in-progress beauty pageant featuring four-legged contestants — the Paw Pageant.

Spectators and participants at the Paw Pageant in Old Spitalfields Market.

The Paw Pageant in the Old Spitalfields Market.

Leaving the market and turning right onto Hanbury Street, we popped into a vintage store, Absolute Vintage, that was lined from top to bottom with purses, dresses, shoes, and more. In case you were wondering, that perfectly posed female is not a mannequin in the picture below — it’s a shopper frozen in the moment of deciding what purse to take off of one of the many overflowing displays.

We walked a few blocks further and arrived at the cafe-lined Brick Lane. I can honestly say that I have never seen such a concentration of Indian restaurants in one place!

Brick Lane in London's East End is lined with a vast variety of Indian restaurants.

More markets are held within the old Truman Brewery buildings — the smokestack of which is seen in the photo below. Everything from one-off sales to designer samples in sparsely furnished warehouses line Brick Lane so it is a slice of shopping heaven for the hip and trendy.

Smokestack of the old Truman Brewery off Brick Lane in London.

The funny, funky streetlamps on funny, funky Brick Lane in London.

One last note — in spite of the occasional crowds in various restaurants (and that is to be expected on any weekend!), this entire area felt less like a ‘tourist market’ and more like a local market with quality products that are aimed at London residents. In a previous post that discussed a visit to the Camden Markets, I aired my aggravation with the throngs of pushy people, the overlapping food smells, the sheer tattiness of most of the goods on offer, and the distinct sensation that it was being touted as a ‘must do’ thing for tourists in London.

Camden Market was such a jolting disappointment that we were thrilled to visit the Spitalfields and Brick Lane area after a recommendation from our friend Claire. This is the happy, upbeat, relatively uncrowded, and genuine market experience for the kinds of quality items that we were looking for in London.

Try it for yourself and see!

Spruikers With A Scottish Twist

Spruiker — a word I had never heard before I moved to Australia in the mid-1990s. And many of you may be as clueless to what that word means as I was! The Dictionary.com interpretation of spruiker says that it is indeed based on Australian slang, and the verb spruik means “archaic , slang ( Austral ) to speak in public (used esp of a showman or salesman).”

Most of us will have passed a shopping district at some point in our life and heard the annoying sound of someone with a microphone trying to talk you into coming in and checking out the sale at the store that they are standing in front of. And that’s exactly what these incongruously clad gentlemen were doing on this particular day in Dresden, Germany.

The blaring soundtrack on their portable stereo was playing a mind-boggling mix of Scottish tunes and 1950s rock-n-roll. And dressed though they might have been in Scottish kilts and hats, they were indeed German through and through.

They did accomplish one of their goals even if I never went inside the discount shoe store — they made me stop and look!

Spruikers in Scottish garb on a shopping street in Dresden, Germany.

Picture Of The Day: Taking Home The Groceries Via Bike

So what do you do if you live in a small town near Dresden in eastern Germany — Ortrand to be specific — and you either don’t have an automobile or you choose not to use it? How do you take your groceries home?

This man rode his bike past the pretty, pastel buildings after I watched him filling the cart up with plants from the garden shop and groceries from the greengrocer. No traffic stress, no petrol bills, a nice bit of exercise, and definitely a way to live more lightly on the planet!

Taking home the groceries via bike in Ortrand, Germany

Photo Of The Day: Scarf Shopping Is A Very Important Business — Really!

Don’t laugh, any of you men who are reading this. Scarf shopping can be a very important business!

Just ask any French woman (and rather a lot of the men there as well!) how important it is to accessorize your outfit with just the right scarf. There is the fabric to consider — the weight, the drape, the feel against your skin, the colour — so many important variables.

But there are other reasons for scarves — and they include being an item of head-wear in a country where custom or culture dictates that women should have their heads covered. This picture was taken in Kuala Lumpur and there was a dazzling array of scarves on offer in this shop. The woman traveller, with her rolling suitcase in tow, was taking her time and making her selection with care.

Scarf shopping is an important business

Crushed By Crowds and Crabby

Note to self — no matter which of us says to the other one, “Oooo! They have a really big market over at (insert location of choice). Want to go?” — the default answer in a humongous city the size of London should always be no-no-no-no-no. This also falls under the category of ‘How to spoil a perfectly lovely day on the weekend.’

Jammed up in the crowds at Camden Market

But wait — it gets better. Not once (are we slow learners on occasion?) but twice on the same weekend we sampled a market. At least on the second try I took zero pictures and we walked briskly through the crowds and out the other side in less than five minutes with me saying “This is not the way I remember things being.”

Am I getting old and crabby? (don’t answer that!) Or has my tolerance for being crushed by crowds, smelling too many overlapping food aromas, hearing music playing loudly that I outgrew decades ago, seeing people draped on every available surface, and looking at items that I could find on Ebay simply erased my joy in the whole ‘market scene’ rather a lot?

I choose to regard this minor case of a shock-horror moment — complete with remarks from my husband to the effect of “If you could see your face, Deborah!” — as another time capsule moment when things were viewed from a different perspective 17 years ago. Otherwise, the population boom in London really has resulted in a population boom at the large markets and they are no longer a pleasant way to spend an afternoon.

Camden Lock

Crowds on every waterside walkway at Camden Market

It isn’t strictly a ‘young scene’ although the preponderance of people sitting, standing, or elbowing their way through the throngs on the waterside walkways did appear to primarily be in the under-30 category.

Elsewhere there were people in attendance of all shapes, sizes, and ages — gamely picking through the goods on offer, slurping down a latte or a chai tea, or simply people watching.

I continue to read that this market is a recommended place to go when you visit London. But unless you have lived a deprived or rural or shopping-zone-free life, I cannot for the life of me understand why a guidebook writer would find this place thrilling.

Crowded shopping in the Camden Market halls

So, if a crush of crowds with pointy elbows and massive feet, a plethora of ‘cuisine’ smells, dated music sounds, and so-so merchandise makes you as crabby as it made me, this might just be a place to avoid!

A Wanderful Life

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