Tuesday, March 16, 2010

laissez les bon temps roulez

Ah, the life....to be an antique dealer buying in France.  It's the life dreams are made of. Who would not want to go to France for a few weeks, shop til you drop, buy without wondering how you'll get it home, wander wide eyed with joy through endless fields arrayed with treasures?

photo Corey Amaro

I am not alone in my quest for treasures nor my passion for France. Rather I have friends, good friends, who suffer the same passions or obsessions, depending on your view or whether you were previously married to one of us.


photo Corey Amaro

Friends who jump with joy when they hear that revely for the next morning's hunt is 4:00am. Friends who literally drop from sheer exhaustion at the end of a long, successful day of brocanting and ask "what time tomorrow". Friends who catelog and pack  purchases with the enthusiasm of Christmas Eve long after everyone else is sound asleep.






Friends who help you pack. Rare.  Friends who totally understand what it takes to be an antique dealer hunting for treasures in France ......priceless.

photo Corey Amaro


Salut!
Lynn

Thursday, March 4, 2010

The Traveling Trunk

After 2 glorious weeks of brocantes, fairs and antique shops throughout France and Belgium, the container was full and ready to ship. However, I was not and magnificent Hotel La Madone was beckoning me to return. Who was I to resist. Sidewalk cafes, hidden vineyards, winding streets with tempting boutiques, favorite towns and villages just waiting to explore were all there for me and......so were the brocantes. Five days later a glorious cache of oyster plates, copper pots, exquisite oil paintings, a mariners telescope and more were piled neatly in my room ready to go home with me.  The problem, everything had already been sent to the shipper. The shipper is in Belgium.





Shipping your goodies back from France to the States is not to be taken lightly.  It's expensive. So what to do? When I lived in Brussels in the early part of the decade, we used Rubber Maid trunks when we traveled.  This allowed us to pack the necessary items we ex-pats needed and move them back and forth as part of our luggage allowance. (Read: before the ridiculous fees and restrictions were imposed!) Alas, not an inexpensive option now, but the best one I had. I just had to find a "traveling trunk".  And what to my wonderous eyes did appear, but you guessed it, a trunk. And all I thought at the time was that - a trunk.

Back to La Madone and the packing began.  You must understand first that my room was on the second floor which in actuality translates into the third floor, at the top of a winding, narrow staircase with no elevator. I carefully and lovingly packed each of the SMALL treasures I had acquired. The next day I prepared to leave to catch my train from Avignon to Paris and from there to board my flight with my "additional luggage trunk". There were 2 of us and we were ready to load the trunk into the car.  We could not lift it. We couldn't begin to get it down the stairs and I was going to check it as luggage??? Not gonna happen.





I could take everything out, box and ship my new treasures via "Baggage du Monde". The only problem was, I had absolutely fallen in love with the "traveling trunk". The faint souvenir travel stickers, the slots for tickets and baggage receipts, the patina, the romance of it all was completely captivating. I would look at it and find myself humming the strains from La Vie en Rose. So the solution -  personally deliver it to my shipper in Brussels.  Little things like changes to train and airplane tickets weren't going to deter me. Penalties be damned along with the difficulty of lifting your 150 plus pound luggage onboard the train  This "traveling trunk" with all of its romantic, imagined stories was going home with this "traveling girl".








Salut!
Lynn