The Story Behind Our Paris Apartment

If you've ever wondered how a girl who fell hopelessly in love with a flea market ends up owning a piece of a Parisian building with over a century of history, well…sit down, because this is a long one. It's the story of how Paris found its way into my heart, how it turned into a business, and how it eventually became an apartment I never expected to find.

How My Love Affair with Paris Began
My real love story with Paris started about 25 years ago. My husband and I were on our way to Russia to adopt our daughter, and back then, you could add a few nights of layover for about the same price as the plane ticket. So we stopped in Paris.
I fell madly in love.

As soon as we arrived, we had one of those classic "lost in translation" moments. I only had about two years of high school French under my belt, and back then menus weren’t translated. So, looking at a picture, we thought we had ordered a basket of French fries at a little café, only to get a basket of fried minnows! Still makes me laugh.

But that trip planted something. I fell in love with the romance of it, the beauty of it, the way the French seem to do everything — food, fashion, architecture, conversation — so elegantly. The history of the buildings. The language. Honestly, I always joke that I could live on cheese, chocolate, and bread alone and be completely happy in France forever.

And for the next 25 years, I just kept going back. Again and again and again.

Saint-Ouen: Where My Business Began
I'd read about a huge flea market outside the city and it was one of the most incredible things I had ever experienced. I got giddy just being there, looking at all the fabulous items and all the booths! It was my very first time aux Puces de Saint-Ouen.
Every single trip to Paris, I made my way to Saint-Ouen, the famous flea market, and every single time, I bought more and more. I used to tell my husband, "Wouldn't it be so much fun to have a shop where I could buy all these treasures and sell them?" Little did I know!

It stayed a daydream for years, until a friend pushed me to finally turn it into a real business. That was two years ago this summer, and I am sincerely grateful she gave me a soft nudge, because I don't think I would have done it on my own.
I love every bit of it:  the hunting, the picking, the finding, the showing people what I've found. I just want to bring people joy the way all of these beautiful old things bring joy to me.

The Search for a Paris Apartment
Once the business took off, spending so much time in Paris meant it only made sense to look for an apartment of our own. We worked with a realtor and focused almost entirely on the 1st and 8th arrondissements, since that's where I assumed I wanted to be.

I looked. And looked. And looked some more.

I saw gorgeous apartments, but nothing I fell madly in love with. And I knew that if I was going to buy an apartment in Paris, I needed to feel about it the way I felt about the city itself: completely, hopelessly in love.

The apartment we finally bought didn't come from a listing we found ourselves. It came from dear friends of ours. Thankfully,  Swann Charton has a background in construction and renovation, and when I mentioned my apartment search, he told me flatly that I was looking in the wrong neighborhoods entirely, and that I belonged in the 4th instead.

I said, essentially, "You're the expert — I'll do whatever you say."

Within about a week of that conversation, he sent me photos of the listing and said, "This has to be your apartment." One look at the view and I understood exactly what he meant.

I didn't get to Paris to see it in person until a few months later. I walked through the front door, straight past the living room, and out onto the balcony, and just stood there, taking in the view of the Seine, walking back and forth in disbelief. When I finally turned around and actually looked at the apartment itself, I knew right then I had found our home away from home.