The focus of today's adventure was to learn about the vast flea markets of Paris. This long-standing tradition was born out of the aftermath of the French revolution, when it became a "thing" for people to collect broken items and odd bits to try to sell on the northern boundary of the city. After a while, this irritated the central government who wanted this group of scavengers to stop making the city look ugly, so they relocated just outside of the city limit in the military zone in shanty style towns. These sellers would sometimes sell clothes that were infested with insects, at times so much so that it was easy to see fleas jumping around in the clothes lots. People would remark on the volume of fleas by complaining that it wasn't a clothing market, but rather a flea market with clothes mixed in. There are 13 markets in total. We explored just a portion of a few of them. The following are photos of the first market encountered.
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