Montmartre - Part 1 (May 3)

I took advice from some thing I read and got out at the Anvers stop.  Old meets new in the sign.

Well everything fell into place beautifully from here.  First, right across the road were the Sympa shops.

Big cartons of clothes arrive and they are pretty much just dumped into the piles you see outside the shop.  There are some things hung up inside, but it's still like a rummage sale.  Everything is new, but it's stuff that manufacturers no longer want.  There are name brand goods as well as unknown brands.  I bought 2 bras for 4 euro total so I was happy - but it does take a while and I had had enough and moved on.  I was on the lookout for the fabric areas.  I found the biggest store - Marche Saint Pierre - quite easily.

It has the feel of an old world store.  The cashier sits in a wood and glass cubicle and you give her a ticket rather than the goods.  The ticket is written by one of the floorwalkers - people with scissors and tape measures wandering around cutting fabric in situ - you don't lug fabric anywhere.  I bought a small remnant that had a tag - 40 centimetres at 7.90 euro per metre.  I had to first get the man to write that down on a ticket, then hand the ticket to the cashier who then calculated it and rang it up.  By the way, she is just a cashier - the plastic bags are around the corner, she does not pack for you.  I suppose the system makes sense if you're buying lots of different fabrics because all the cashier has to do is deal with the calculations. 
There are 5 levels of fabrics here.  Across the road there is a related shop that just has remnants - and by that I mean precut lengths.  I was tempted by what looks like lutradur in a wide range of fun colours.

Another shop had multi coloured sisal.

Time to do some sightseeing.  Climbing up the hill to the Basilica I saw lots of hawkers selling bags.

Yes, puff puff, that's just the thing I'm missing as I climb the hill - a new handbag!  You have to be fit doing a job like theirs - I saw a couple of them run like crazy with their bags in a swag over their shoulders - I couldn't see who was after them, but it certainly got them going.  There it is.

Someone got so excited he jumped out of his shoes.

Probably rushing down to buy a new handbag.  You can't avoid people in a place like this.

And you also can't avoid the buskers/performers, who are all trying to add to the experience.