A friendly flea market

A visit to a "marché aux puces'' - a Paris flea market - is a wonderful way to spend a few hours, especially on Sundays when most shops are closed and the museums are crowded.

Most of the guidebooks suggest the big Marché aux Puces de St-Ouen, with its 2,000 stands and 10 miles of walkways, much of it inside a maze of covered arcades.

My favorite is the much smaller and friendly weekend market on the opposite side of town at the Port de Vanves (www.pucesdeparis-portedevanves.com) where about 350 merchants set up Saturdays and Sundays from 7 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. along the Avenue Marc Sangrier.

Tourists are fewer, and prices can be a bit lower. If you're in the market for buttons, vintage glassware, copper-bottomed pots, old prints or jewelry, this is where to go for something you won't find back home, but even if you're not, the people-watching is worth the 20-minute trip on the Paris Metro (Take Line 13. Get off at Port de Vanves and follow the crowds).

Crusty characters with station wagons or trucks big enough to hold paintings or books or collections of ceramic coffee grinders arrive before dawn, set up a table, then while away the hours between customers smoking, reading the papers, playing cards, talking on their cell phones or catching up on gossip.

One man laid down mats on the pavement and put up a sign that said "2 euro.'' The items included three Nescafe cappuccino glasses, a box of keys, some knives and forks with colored handles and a few books. The crowd is mostly local and the atmosphere is laid-back - no pushing or shoving, and oddly, no real bargaining for discounts.

For 30 euros, about $40, I decided to pass on a finely detailed little mother-of-pearl pin shaped like a mandolin. My score of the day was a little knife with a squatty wooden handle. I asked what it was. When I couldn't understand the French explanation, an English-speaking friend of the stall owner volunteered that it was an oyster knife.

I don't plan to shuck any oysters, but for one euro, $1.30, it will do nicely tacked to the wall in my kitchen where I have a collection of utensils like this - most bought on trips to other countries - that, like photographs, bring back instant memories.